RGL e-Book Cover 2018©
RGL e-Book Cover 2018©
I WAS condemned to die. I have known men who have read their obituary notices, and laughed over the extraordinary list of virtues with which they have been accredited. They have assured me that the situation is most amusing. I can well believe it.
Circumstances have not thrown me into the society of criminals condemned to death for murder—I believe their feelings are not of a joyous kind. But, when you are young, strong, and clean- limbed, with a normally clear conscience, and a healthy appetite, and you are told that you are to be cut off from this mortal world in the interval between dinner and a light midnight supper, the thing seems so preposterous that you are amused.
I actually did laugh, not very boisterously, perhaps, but with a sufficient heartiness to bring a look of puzzled amazement to every person's brow in the room.
"Monsieur does not fear death, then?" said a man who was standing in front of me, with a face as sallow as an unripe peach, and a pair of moustaches that appeared as if their ends might interfere at any moment with his eyesight.
"On the contrary, monsieur," I replied, bowing. "Like my friend, M. Mantalini, I consider it a damned infernally unpleasant thing."
There was a sentence written down in blue-black ink with an ordinary pen on reasonably white paper.
That the sentence passed on the man calling himself Hubert Gascoigne by the Central Committee of the Organisation of Combat is death.
I remember it reminded me so strongly of the resolutions passed at the preliminary meeting of a limited liability company. "That Messrs. So-and-So are and be the Solicitors of the Company." That phrase, "are and be," always amused me. With a certain irresponsibility of reasoning, my mind framed the death sentence unto like language.
"Resolved by the Central Committee of the Organisation of Combat that the man, calling himself Hubert Gascoigne, is and be a dead man."
Actually, I suppose, the situation was really rather serious. Indeed, it had turned out a most curious and unpleasant adventure.
Two days previously, the Russian Mad-Dog Fleet had played havoc with the Dogger Bank fishing trawlers. The incident was of such an extraordinary nature, so unexpected, and so scandalous, that it had immediately become an international affair. I had been sent over post haste from Paris to bear a despatch dealing with the situation from our Ambassador, to whom I was attached to the Foreign Office. After a few hours in London I had received my instructions, and had re-crossed the Channel once more. Having delivered my despatches to the Ambassador, I had been allowed an evening off, so to speak, for the Ambassador is always very considerate. As I had to hold myself in readiness to leave for Berlin the following day, he had murmured something about the effects of all work and no play, and the character of a certain John, and begged me to enjoy myself as discreetly as might be for the evening.
My idea of discreet amusement had led me to saunter after dinner through the spacious Courts of the Louvre, to hang over the parapet of the Pont des Arts, and lulled to a thoughtful mood by the twisting of the myriad lights in the Seine to continue an aimless promenade in the Latin Quarter. I took all the oldest and oddest streets en route, and, winding through narrow lanes and dimly-lit streets, where the heavy 'buses almost filled the space between the houses, I had somehow drifted up through Rue Buonaparte to the Luxembourg Gardens, when my dreamy musings were broken in upon by a curious series of incidents.
I was taking no particular note of the people that passed me. Scraps of conversation now and again reached my ears, and made slight but ineffectual impressions upon my brain. I was in a glorious mood of thinking of nothing in particular. I heard plump French wives talking of the price of bread, a couple of French artists laughing lustily about the latest incident at Juifan's. and the price of bread and the vagaries of artists muddled themselves together in my mind in a very ridiculous and fantastic manner with heaps of other scraps and odds and ends. But, into this maze of dreams there broke, as it were, a thrice-repeated refrain. Three times, between the church and the corner, where the Rue Vivin runs down to the iron railings of the Luxembourg Gardens, two men passed me, going in opposite directions. I heard the first couple say to one another as they passed, "To-night," and I was not interested. The second couple likewise passed each other, and whispered hurriedly, without stopping. "To-night." Then I began to wake up. When the third couple met, and murmured the same refrain, I became interested, and, when a man like me becomes interested, he becomes curious.
That was the whole cause of the affair. I deliberately turned back upon my tracks, and, catching up to one of the men, so passed him that he could not avoid pushing against me with his shoulder. He turned to me with a "Pardon", and, as his eyes met mine, I murmured, on the spur of the moment, "To-night." Immediately came the echo, "To-night." He was a well-dressed man—I should say of about forty: he had, in short, all the appearance of being a well-to-do Paris idler. He seemed quite charmed with our meeting.
"You are going now?" he murmured softly, under his breath.
"Yes," I replied without hesitation.
"Ah, that is good. We can go together, comrade."
Nothing, I assured him, would give me greater pleasure.
I was quite awake by this time. The adventure promised to be amusing.
Talking on many subjects on all of which my companion seemed remarkably well-informed, we wended our way through a maze of streets. I do not suppose I could find the way again, for I took little notice of our bearings. But, after ten minutes' walk, he turned suddenly to the right, down a dark impasse, walked some twenty feet into the darkness, stopped, and knocked sharply at the door.
I kept close by his side. And, when, almost instantly, the door swung open, I followed in silence at his heels. The door swung back behind us, and I found myself in a long passage, at the end of which burned a light above another doorway. At this other barrier my comrade knocked. A voice from within challenged us.
"Friends," replied the man, and this other door swung open. Within was a sort of turnstile arrangement, fitted on one side like a box-office, only permitting of one person to pass beyond at a time. On a wooden ledge lay some slips of paper, and a pencil attached by a string. The man scribbled something on a slip, pushed it through a narrow hole in the partition, and waited. In a few seconds a sepulchral voice cried, "Pass."
My comrade of the street pushed his way through the turnstile, disappeared beyond and I found myself left alone. Clearly if I was to proceed I had to imitate him. But, what to write on the paper? Acting on the spur of the moment, I took one of the slips, scribbled down the word. 'To-night,' and pushed it with my hand through the little slit in the partition. It was an anxious few seconds. For if I had mistaken the ritual, I was caught very much like a rat in a trap. The door behind me had automatically locked itself, after being closed, and I could not pass the turnstile without the consent of the person or persons within. But, fortunately, I had guessed right.
"Pass," said the voice, and with a feeling of ever-growing excitement, I shouldered my way through the turnstile. Another passage, a swing door, and I found myself in a room filled with some thirty or forty men and women, most of them of a wild, cadaverous type, but all of them clearly persons of position.
No woman entering a drawing-room could have wished to cause a greater sensation. Usually, I am cool, but I confess that a slight blush of modesty crept into my cheeks at the silence which suddenly fell at my appearances. All eyes were turned on me, and only with a great effort of will was I able to walk over to where my comrade of the street sat.
"Quite a number of us here tonight," I said airily, wondering what the deuce I had fallen into, and wishing for the first time I was well out of it.
"Ah, we shall have a full order tonight," he said.
Just then I felt a tap on my arm. A stout, red-faced gentleman was speaking to me.
"Your name?" he said peremptorily.
"I don't think it's usual," I said, with an assumption of hauteur.
"What the President asks, that you must disclose."
"Ah, yes; I had forgotten the rule," I said, seeing my mistake. And then, without thinking, I gave my own name.
The effect was startling.
The President raised his hand. Instantly the whole company took up a position in front of the doorway, with the exception of four men, who flung themselves upon me, and bore me to the ground. The assault was so unexpected; the whole business had acted so rapidly, that I was lying, bound hand and foot, within the space of a couple of minutes, without having offered the slightest resistance.
"What the devil—" I spluttered from my position on the floor.
"Silence!" said the President, and then, addressing two of the men, he pointed to a chair. "Place him there."
Like a sack of flour I was hoisted into the chair.
"Thanks," I said to the President, recovering my wits. "That is much more comfortable, anyway."
"Why have you come here?" His voice was ridiculously stern.
"Merely idle curiosity," I said. "I have answered. The facts are as I state."
He tried a new tack. "How did you come here?"
Frankness, I thought, was the best course. I explained my experiences in detail.
The President listened calmly. When I had finished, he went to a table, took a pen in his hand, and began to write. The rest of the company stood in serried ranks in front of the door. Except for the sound of the scratching of the pen, dead silence reigned. The President finished writing, he rose from his chair, and came towards me with a piece of paper in his hand. He held it in front of my eyes. I read it slowly.
That the sentence passed on the man calling himself Hubert Gascoigne by the Central Committee of the Organisation of Combat is death.
The company gathered round me as I read. And it was when, after finishing my reading, I laughed, that the gentleman with the long moustaches ventured the remark, that monsieur did not fear death.
I certainly seemed to cause a sensation.
"If you would not think me impertinently curious," I said, addressing the President, "might I ask the reason for a decision fraught with such unpleasant consequences for myself?"
"You are a spy."
"We are strangers," I replied, "and my unsupported testimony may not carry much weight, but I assure you, as from one gentleman to another, that the facts of the case are absolutely as I have narrated them."
The President laughed sardonically.
"You are a spy," he replied, "and the sentence of the Organisation is death."
"Ladies and gentlemen," I said, looking at the faces around me, "I appeal to you—do I look like a spy?"
I scanned their faces eagerly. But, as my eyes wandered round the room, I saw nothing written in the eyes of the members but faith in the President's conclusion.
And then, suddenly, from the serried rows of hard, set faces, saw the face of somebody I knew. Somebody I had danced with many times in St Petersburg. Somebody who had a reputation for beauty and wit that was European.
She was standing next to a short nervous-looking man, to whose appearance I did not pay much attention. It was the Countess Blaveski. Somehow, she seemed to be trying to avoid my glance, and when my eye caught hers she blushed crimson.
"At any rate, there is somebody here who knows me," I said. "Ask her if I am a spy. I appeal to you—" I was about to mention her name, but before I could do so, she cried out:—"President, this is no spy. I have known Mr. Gascoigne in private life for years. He is a rich young Englishman—the son of a lord. I can vouch for him that he has neither sufficient intelligence nor enough energy to be a spy."
All eyes were turned upon the Countess as she spoke.
"What proof have you of this, Camille Beaudet?" said the President, turning to her. I made a note of the name. It was clear it would not be politic to address her as the Countess Blaveski.
"I will stake my life that he is not a spy. My life shall answer for his honesty."
I determined to take no part in the discussion. It was extremely good of the Countess to go to these extremes on my behalf. The President, I could see, began to falter. He turned, and questioned me closely, plying me with interrogations about matters relating directly or indirectly to the Organisation.
I was so completely ignorant as to what exactly was the nature of the secret society into the middle of which I had stumbled, that I saw that I finally convinced him that mere idle curiosity, and not any political machinations had led me to the meeting.
At length the President turned once more to the company. "Camille Beaudet," he said, in solemn tones, "do you swear that you will answer for this man's honesty?"
"You have questioned him," replied the Countess, "and your questions have made it clear that until you showed him your order he was ignorant even of the name of this Society. I swear that I will hold my life forfeit for his honesty."
A murmur of assent went round the room. Clearly they were not a bloodthirsty community.
"If we give you your release," the President said, turning to me, "will you swear that you will never disclose either the whereabouts of this place, or what you have heard tonight?"
"I neither know where I am at the moment, nor what is the nature of your Society. It may denote crass ignorance on my part, but, to be candid, sir, I never heard of your Society before; and the warm reception with which I have met tonight at your hands does not encourage me to inquire any closer into your Organisation. I solemnly swear that, provided I am released from this not very comfortable position, I will not disclose to anybody what has befallen me this night."
"You know nothing about our Society?" retorted tile President, looking at me sternly, "but, I will tell you this; that, if you break your oath, it matters not where you are, or how safe you may consider yourself, the Society will strike you dead."
"I can assure you, Mr. President, that I will give it no occasion for doing anything so unpleasant."
He spoke to one of the members, and in another second my bonds were cut, and I was standing on my feet, stretching myself to get the cramp out of my legs and arms. I was then conducted to the door.
I passed the Countess as I was led out. She was standing against the wall with the same short, little nervous man, by her side. I stopped and held out my hand. "I have to thank you for my release," I said aloud. And then, under my breath, "I hope we shall meet again, Countess."
I could say no more, for, truth to tell, the Honourable Society was very anxious to be rid of my presence. I was hurried through the turnstiles, and down the passage out into the night. There a cabriolet with drawn blinds was waiting. One of the members took his seat by my side. The cab rattled off. For some ten minutes we drove, speaking no word to each other. Then suddenly the cab stopped.
"You will get out here, monsieur," he said, opening the door.
Obediently I stepped out
"Remember your oath," he said, as I brushed past him. The door banged. The driver whipped up his horse, and I found myself standing somewhere in the neighbourhood of the Quay d'Orsay, looking after it in a dazed, dreamy sort of way. For quite a considerable time I must have stood there, amazed at my adventure.
At last I pulled myself together, and, hailing a coacher, drove to my hotel.
And this is really where, properly speaking, my strange story begins.
I WAS floundering in my bath at the Hotel Ritz trying to find in the cold water a lucid explanation of the incidents of the previous night, when it occurred to me that I had better present myself at the Embassy for my orders.
The adventure, with its remarkable sequel, had almost put duty out of my head; but, having once got under weigh, I promptly appeared before my chief, who already had a despatch ready for the Ambassador at Berlin, with his own comments duly endorsed on the back. It was a matter for swift action, and the French Foreign Office had been promptly interviewed, with the result that my stay in Paris was a question of hours.
By the noon train, I set out for the Kaiser's capital, and, curled up in a corner of a comfortable corridor carriage, again tried to reason out my remarkable adventure.
It was a mad thing for an attaché, entrusted with a mission of such urgency and delicacy, to allow himself to be dragged into so ludicrous a position. And yet, was it ludicrous? The fellows were hardly the kind of men one would describe as humorists. Their cadaverous cheeks, and the intense earnestness in their wild eyes, suggested tragedy rather than comedy and the more I thought of it the more steadily convinced I became that, but for the intervention of Countess Blaveski, His Britannic Majesty's Service would have seen no more of me.
What on earth this woman was doing in the company of hirsute political maniacs like the men who had solemnly condemned me to death, it was impossible to imagine. She had the entree to the highest society in every capital in Europe. So far as I had known her up to the present, she was a lady of no fads or opinions: her family had about as many centuries behind it as the reigning House of Russia itself; and, since the tragic disappearance of her husband, in a snowstorm on the Siberian Hills, after a few months of married life, she had moved quietly in Court life at St. Petersburg, admired by men, envied by women for her beauty, and coveted by fortune hunters for the riches she was supposed to possess.
I had seen little of her myself for a year or two; and, as my thoughts wandered idly from subject to subject, I contrasted her appearance the previous night, pale, terrified, hunted, with her dazzling brilliancy when last I saw her, leaning on the arm of her young husband, at a Court Ball, in St Petersburg.
Count Blaveski was one of the favourites of the young Emperor. He was a fine, well set up type of the old Russian nobility, and as he passed me in the ballroom, in his glittering uniform, with his handsome wife on his arm, I remembered remarking to the lady with whom I happened to be chatting at the time, that they were surely the best matched pair in Europe.
"First impressions are not always correct," the lady had remarked to me, with a note of meaning in her voice, which, at the time, I put down to woman's jealousy, and I remember that I resolved never to praise one woman to another again.
And now, after a decorous period of mourning, the young widow was apparently roaming about in weird, unwholesome places, associating herself with a crowd of international criminals, who neither appreciated her womanly charms, nor understood the tastes and instincts of the higher life to which she had been accustomed.
I had been under the impression she was still at St Petersburg, and whispers had reached us in England that the Dowager Empress had taken so particular an interest in the bereaved lady as to insist on having her continually with her. The personal sympathy of the Dowager evidently had failed to soothe the high-spirited girl-widow.
That the young Countess would drift back into the gaiety of Court life, and eventually marry another man of rank, everybody felt certain. It was, of course, the natural thing. A reasonable period of respect for the memory of her husband, and she became again, to all intents and purposes, a mere girl, with no other responsibility in life save that of taking her place as a single lady in the great world of fashion. Personally, I should not have been surprised had I heard that she was already engaged, or even married, and I had yet to learn the effect of the influence of the Dowager Empress upon her.
There are limits even to the interest one can get out of thinking about a fine woman, and I was not particularly sorry when, after an hour or two, a fellow passenger took a seat in my compartment. He had been roaming up and down the corridor, looking in at compartment after compartment, and chatting with people here and there, with the lively freedom of a Frenchman with cosmopolitan instincts. He addressed me first in French, and then drifted into fairly good English. I am supposed to be something of a linguist; it's about the only thing useful I'm good at; but, as it is less bother talking one's own language than another, I kept my fellow traveller at his English, and allowed his brain to do the translation.
He was a man with a pleasant voice and a big store of knowledge about all parts of the world. Yet there was about him an indescribable air of suppressed zeal, which hardly accorded with the bright and light ease of his conventional small talk. London he knew very well; in fact he knew something of everywhere.
Could he be of any assistance to monsieur at Berlin? Was monsieur well acquainted with the Prussian capital? and did he know the language? If not a little help might be useful. And, if he cared to spend a few hours in ordinary sight-seeing, there were good guides to be got. But one should be careful to select intelligent persons.
I smilingly assured my obliging friend that I knew my way about Berlin fairly well, and that in any case, I had a definite object in going there, and would not be likely to devote myself to pleasure.
He accepted my thanks for his offer with a characteristic shrug of his shoulders, and skilfully, as I afterwards thought, led the conversation into a polite argument as to the advantages of a definite purpose over the mere pursuit of pleasure. As I have never been particularly fond of work, and my worst enemy has never charged me with being too serious a person, I took the line that it was a great hindrance, if not a nuisance, to have to be at any particular spot at any particular time. He held, with rather exaggerated eagerness, that life without a definite aim day by day has no real pleasure; that its interest was artificial, and it could bring no real comfort or consolation in old age.
I happen to be at a period of life when a man has ceased to be annoyed at being thought too young, but has not yet begun to think about any other age than the present. Responsibilities of life, and the prospect of old age, therefore, trouble me far less now than they did ten years ago, when my greatest ambition was to convince the world that I had come to years of discretion.
The Frenchman's argument, accordingly had little force with me, but he carried it on with a pleasant style, with so little in it to bore one, that I found myself quite interested.
"Now look at me," he said, "I am a man with no cares in life; no wife to devote herself to me; no children to love me; nothing to do but to enjoy myself. I go to Berlin today. I have seen all Berlin, over and over again; yet I go there because I am tired of Paris. To me, the end of journey will be of no more importance than the beginning. Indeed it will be of less interest to me because I will have no further opportunity of monsieur's conversation and company. While you?" he continued, as he straightened himself from the graceful bow with which he accompanied the compliment to my conversational powers, "will have accomplished something. You will be at your journey's end; your mission executed."
"No; not till I have seen the Ambassador—"
What a fool I was to blurt out this to a mere stranger. Fortunately, the Frenchman had taken the opportunity to light another cigarette, and was fumbling with the match box just as I pulled up myself, and he did not notice the awkward pause at the end of the word Ambassador. At any rate, it didn't matter, for, as I gently led him on a little while after to other matters, I found he knew nothing about politics, and had no idea of the relations between one nation and another, or the work necessary for international understandings.
"I am a pure cosmopolitan," he remarked at one point. "It seems to me a pity we cannot all be of one huge nation, with the one object in life of being pleasant and agreeable to each other. I never met anybody deeply interested in politics, but I should imagine they must be very funny people."
I smiled to myself, and wondered what the little man would say if I told him he had been talking to one of the Inner Guard of international politics. But as this might only lead to my displaying my ignorance of these things which are supposed to be my main business in life, I allowed the versatile foreigner to float airily away from politics to other things. Somehow or other, I hardly remember by what stages, we got to St. Petersburg and Russian life.
"And, do you know," he said, "I was agreeably surprised on my first visit to St. Petersburg. I expected to find everybody intensely occupied with political questions, but I discovered that there were quite a lot of nice people who live just ordinary happy lives like the rest of us. It was some two years ago when I was last there, and a delightful time I had, saddened, however, by a terrible tragedy in domestic life. A young nobleman, with every promise of a great future, was killed without a moment's warning. And the saddest part of all was the fact that he left behind a charming wife. They had practically only just returned from the wedding trip. Ah, monsieur has heard the story, I perceive?"
The story certainly bore a remarkable resemblance to the events in the career of Countess Blaveski, of which I had been thinking just as my companion introduced himself to me.
"I happen to know a lady whose history is almost identical with the heroine of your story," I said. "I met her in St. Petersburg very shortly before she lost her husband."
"And you have not seen her since?"
I was looking out of the window as I talked, but something in the man's tone as he asked this apparently casual question prompted me to turn round abruptly. As I did so a bland smile of sympathy spread over his pale face, but not before I had detected an eagerness in his bright black eyes, that almost amounted to, I thought, ferocity.
"Well, I am not quite certain," I said with what I am convinced was pardonable prevarication. "My information is that she is still in St. Petersburg, but I imagined I saw her recently in Paris."
"I perceive the Countess is not an intimate friend of monsieur's, or he would have made certain."
"No, I can't say that I am engrossingly interested in the lady. But for her sad story, which naturally interested us all, I should possibly have thought no more about her than of the hundreds of other ladies I met when my duties took me to St. Petersburg."
"Ah."
The involuntary look of satisfaction that came over the gentleman's face as this ejaculation slipped out amused me immensely. I had heard rumours of the infatuated admirers of all nationalities who were trying to woo Mme. Blaveski from the gloomy solitude of widowhood. The fierce anxiety of this little person to discover what had been my relations with her since the death of her husband, was dull, commonplace jealousy, and as soon as he found me heart-whole, so far as the fair Countess was concerned, the conversation resumed its placid and agreeable course.
It was no part of my business to tell him of my extraordinary meeting with the Countess. Indeed, as there was a possibility of his being a favoured suitor, it would have been playing it rather low down on the Countess herself, in view of the fact that she had saved my life, to say anything about it.
We parted company at Berlin, my little friend to seek pleasure, I to make my way as soon as possible to the Embassy, where I presented my papers, and left the wise heads of the Chancellery to consult as to the answer I should return.
Things did not move quite so briskly in Berlin as in Paris. In the capital of the Republic the Foreign Minister was able to act without Royal sanction; in Berlin the matter of my mission was too important to be considered without the Imperial Wilhelm. And, as the Emperor was not to be reached without some delay, I found time hanging on my hands. It was decided to send one of the attachés at the Berlin Embassy to London with a duplicate of the message passed on from the Ambassador at Paris, and I was instructed to present myself in three days' time—prepared to proceed to St Petersburg for an indefinite period.
How should I occupy myself in Berlin? Like the French traveller, I had seen most things that Berlin possessed, and I was looking forward to a lazy time of it as I broke open the letters that had followed me to my hotel. Among them was one from dear old Von Grahaun, a respectable, middle-aged German gentleman, who bore no resemblance to the fiery Scottish Grahams, from whom he was descended, except that he had a house in a South German forest, about ten times more weird than a stony Highland Glen. There was a sort of distant relationship between our families, and after his father, with Caledonian enterprise, had wandered into South Europe, and married the heiress to a vast estate in Bavaria, our people had kept up a more or less consistent correspondence with the family. Von Grahaun himself had married a charming English lady, and when she died had betaken himself to his Bavarian estates, with his little daughter, ministering to the needs of his poorer neighbours, and welcoming heartily any chance traveller from his dead wife's foggy country.
He had heard that I was likely to be in Berlin, and he reminded me of a permanent invitation I had received, expressing further the hope that his daughter and himself would have the pleasure of seeing me if I had time.
Here was a solution of the problem attending the three days' grace. Von Grahaun was a genial soul, and his daughter—well, she was more interesting to me than most girls who imagine themselves grown up. I looked up the time- table, and found that by a sprint I could get a train that would take me there in a few hours. I should have a couple of days in the Bavarian forest, come back to Berlin in the early hours of the third morning, present myself at the Embassy, fresh and fit for duty in St. Petersburg.
Among the many platforms at the Berlin Station I found the one from which the southern train went. It was not a main line service, and there was not an army of uniformed officials on duty at every carriage. Still, it was comfortable enough, and dignified enough, for my purpose. I bundled my belongings into a corner, and strolled along the corridor to the carriage door. Apparently I had the whole set of first-class compartments to myself. The thrifty Bavarians, returning home with the money gathered in the capital of the Empire, did not waste their savings on high railway fares. I was watching a little group of them with casual interest, remarking to myself how much they resembled the Scottish peasantry, when the train showed signs of moving off, and they were promptly bundled into their seats by a busy official.
At that moment the door of a waiting-room suddenly opened, there was a rush, a scramble, and, with a frantic leap, a woman landed on the footboard immediately outside the door at which I was standing.
"Let me in," she gasped in English, as she clutched the little brass rod running across the aperture, and steadied herself.
With my left arm I caught her under the shoulders, moved her gently aside to free the door, and then opened it smartly, and dragged her in. She scrambled past me and, rushing info the nearest compartment, clutched the curtain, and hid her face behind it.
As I turned to follow her, I caught a glimpse of three or four men a little farther down the platform, one of whom was my fellow traveller from Paris. His face was livid. He shouted something hastily to his companions, and just then I lost sight of him as I turned my attention towards the lady who had so unceremoniously constituted herself my solitary companion.
The whole thing had taken comparatively few seconds. I had been looking along the train at the friends of the departing Bavarians, when the woman invaded the footboard of the carriage, and I had not seen her face. She kept it behind the curtain till we had steamed well out of the station, and, then, throwing aside the improvised veil, revealed herself.
"Countess Blaveski!" I gasped.
"HAVE I escaped them? Whom did you see on the platform?" said the Countess, clutching my arm.
"You are excited," I said gently. "Pray calm yourself. We have plenty of time before us now, and you can talk to me later."
She leapt impulsively from the seat, and, going to the door to the compartment, looked eagerly along the corridor.
"We have the whole of this carriage to ourselves," I said. "I have chosen a compartment farther down, away from the draught of the door, and I have some rugs and books there. Won't you come along and make yourself comfortable?"
She followed me to my compartment, and, as I refused to listen to a single word until she had wrapped one of my rugs round her and settled herself comfortably in the corner, I had the satisfaction of seeing her gradually calm herself before we began talking again.
"We seemed destined to meet each other under strange conditions," I said cheerily.
"It is Fate," she murmured devoutly. "God grant we may evade them again!"
"Evade whom?"
This brought her back to her first question.
"Whom did you see on the platform?" she asked again, throwing aside the rug and bending over me in her excitement. Her lovely, delicately chiselled face was within an inch of mine, and as I do not profess to be entirely a stoic where ladies are concerned, I must confess to being a trifle embarrassed.
"Now, my dear Countess, do sit down and calm yourself," I said, merely because I could thing of nothing prettier.
"Yes; but tell me. Whom did you see?" she said again, this time resting her pretty hand, ungloved, on my shoulder.
"Oh, a few people of various kinds."
"Anybody you knew? Anybody you had seen before? Tell me, quick."
"No, except a Frenchman I travelled with yesterday."
"De Risque!'
"Well he did not mention his name to me, nor did I ask him for it. He was a very pleasant, agreeable person, and—"
I had forgotten for the moment that he was one of the Countess's admirers, but the terror with which she repeated the name recalled it to me. Either he was not a favoured suitor, or she had some other reason for getting away from him at this particular time.
She sank back in the seat with a gasp of despair.
"Then he has been with you?" she said.
"Yes; I travelled with him."
"What did yon tell him? Tell me everything."
"I did not tell him that I met you last night," I said determined to relieve her mind at once on the point which doubtless agitated her.
Instead of calming her, however my assistance only appeared to increase her curiosity.
"But what did you talk about? Tell me everything, every word you can remember."
"I do not think your name was any more than casually mentioned," I said.
"Tell me everything," she repeated impatiently.
As faithfully as I could remember I sketched out the course of our conversation between Paris and Berlin. The Countess, deadly pale, listened to the end, and then watched me carefully for a while.
"It is fate! It is fate!" she murmured. "Mr. Gascoigne, do you know what you have told that man?"
"Nothing that I regret," I said reassuringly.
"You have told him, firstly, that you are in the service of the British Government, that you have come from the Ambassador in Paris to the Ambassador in Berlin."
"No, no; I only mentioned the Ambassador very casually, and he was not listening at the time."
"Do not deceive yourself. De Risque misses nothing. You have told him, moreover, that you are accustomed to diplomatic duty on behalf of your country in the Court of St. Petersburg, that you met me there?"
"And what if I did?"
"De Risque was standing behind you the other night when you whispered my title. His suspicions are now confirmed. He knows that I am a member of the Russian Court, and that you are an officer of the British Government."
"De Risque was at the meeting the other night?" I repeated in wonder. "But surely I should have remembered him if he had been the same man as my fellow traveller?"
"Not at all. De Risque leaves nothing to chance. He has a different disguise for every capital, and always makes a point of keeping in the background until he knows people thoroughly. He will be all the more in a rage when he finds he has been deceived by me."
"Deceived by you?"
"Yes. Can't you guess what my position is?"
"I am utterly at a loss to hazard the remotest explanation. I have been trying to understand matters ever since I left you the other night, and the more I endeavour to clear the thing up, the more muddled my brain becomes. Were you, like myself, simply seeking adventure the other night, or—"
I paused awkwardly, not knowing exactly how to put it.
The Countess promptly came to my relief.
"In the present condition of affairs it is necessary that I should tell you," she said, and before she proceeded any farther she took another careful look in every compartment, and opened the door of communication at each end of the corridor. Having made sure that nobody was listening, she sat very close to me, and in a low whisper said: "I am of the Dowager's Secret Service."
I knew the part the Dowager Empress of Russia was playing in the politics of the land of her adoption, but it was news to me that she had her own Secret Service Corps.
"You may not understand what that means," the Countess went on. "I know your English ways are different to ours. Your men lead peaceful, prosperous lives; your women have only to interest their husbands and give their country loyal subjects. In Russia our men are hunted and our women must play the part of their preservers. My Royal mistress for thirty years was the wife of a man whose life was hanging on a single thread every day and hour of his existence. She is the mother of a man who at this very moment is the object of plots and counterplots maturing in every capital of the civilised world. His enemies work in secret, and they who combat them must also work in secret. The common people must be held in check, the country is over-run with men of what you possibly may consider progressive ideas, but so long as Russia lasts, so long must Russian autocracy be sacred."
At home in England I am all for the proper prerogatives of rank and authority. Church and State and the estates of the realm, and all that sort of thing, I have been taught to revere, and although I hate politics, if I lived more in England I suppose I should be fighting as hard as any of the rest of them against any encroachment on what I have been taught to believe the bulwarks of the Constitution. But I had seen enough of Russian life to feel what most Englishmen feel when they find themselves passive onlookers at corruption and oppression. My thoughts must have communicated themselves to my looks, and the Countess added, with a sigh of regret:
"Yes, I know it is useless to argue with you English. Your peasantry are loyal to you, and you can love your neighbours with a full heart. In Russia things are different. I remember well shortly before my marriage my last visit to your country. We spent a day in your own county, and I saw you with your father's peasantry flocking around you, treating you as one of themselves, as you played with the children like a great happy boy."
"And why not?" I asked. "When I am at home all the children of the countryside run after me. I love to play with them, and to talk to the old men. There is a freshness and a breezy, natural honesty about the kids that contrasts so delightfully with the humbug of the Diplomatic Service, and it never seems to me a matter for surprise, or even comment, that an English gentleman should be at home among his neighbours, rich or poor."
The Countess smiled sadly.
"As I said before, it is useless our arguing. If I lived in England I might be of your opinion. I should love it," she added impetuously. And then, sinking back to her terrified whisper again, she went on:—"But to talk of these things is hopeless. I must tell you my story while we are yet safe. The meeting by which you were condemned to death the other night was a gathering of the Organisation of Combat, the most powerful, the most far-reaching, the most relentless society of revolution the world has ever known. Its agents are in every country, its members are bound to each other by ties which the police have failed to sever. Cut off in one city, the line of communication, is carried round from point to point until every official effort is out-manoeuvred. Its vengeance is swiftly and silently wreaked on its own enemies and on those of its members who refuse to obey its mandate. It spares neither age nor sex. It is the one agent of revolt the Dowager and the Ministers of strong will in Russia dread. There is only one country in the world where it will not shed blood."
"And that country?"
"Is yours. England is tolerant. England is free. To England both hunted and hunter fly for safety. It is sanctuary for us all—for us all," she repeated slowly. "If they committed crimes there, your country would no longer be an asylum for them. Paris is their favoured plotting ground. It is within easy reach of your hospitable shores, and it is also conveniently near the sea. They can reach America—"
"But can they land there?"
"They can land anywhere. Do not suppose, Mr. Gascoigne, that the members of the Organisation of Combat come into a country as pauper aliens. They are landing in your city of London and in the western city of New York with all the magnificence of counts and millionaires. No alien law can keep them out. At present their attention is directed towards St. Petersburg. In order to gain first-hand, direct information about their movements, I volunteered to observe them from within. As Camille Beaudet, supposed to be a Parisian girl, I joined the Organisation and became—"
"A spy!"
The word slipped out involuntarily, and I moved away instinctively from the wretched woman. A moment afterwards I felt ashamed of myself. If I had struck her in the face with my clenched fist I could not have injured her half as much. Her head dropped, tears started to her eyes, and a vivid blush of shame spread over her beautiful face. I had imported so much disgust into that little word, that she dare not look me in the eyes. It was a cowardly act. I know it was, but God help me, it was done without thinking. With her head turned away from me, and her voice so husky that I had to strain my ears to catch her words, she finished her story.
"In the Secret Service of my country we do not look at these things in the same light as you do. I became a member of the Organisation, as I have told you, and I was careful only to attend their meetings in Paris. Occasionally, when I left St. Petersburg to be with them, I was supposed to be either sick or in private attendance upon the Dowager in her retirement. When the Organisation missed me from their meetings, I was away earning my living. My occupation was supposed to be that of a teacher, and I had to visit foreign countries in pursuit of my profession. One man in the Organisation I feared more than the others, because I knew his eyes were everywhere, and I dreaded the hour when he might by any chance discover that I was not what I professed to be."
"He does not know now," I hastened to say reassuringly. "Your name was not definitely mentioned yesterday, and he only told me of a story he might have read in the papers."
"Exactly. He told it you because he wanted to see whether you were familiar with it. Our meeting the other night, aroused his suspicions, and, while others of the group watched me, his business was to follow you. It was no chance meeting when he found you in the train, and he laid himself out skilfully, as you now know, to discover your real object in Europe, your knowledge of Government circles, and his recital of my life story to you convinces me that he heard you whisper my title the other night. Very little research would tell him the whole story of Countess Blaveski, for he has all that is interesting in the Court life of every country carefully preserved and indexed. He drew a bow at a venture, and he now knows that I am not Camille Beaudet, but Countess Blaveski."
It gradually dawned upon me as the Countess in her terrified whisper told her story, that I had unconsciously betrayed her to her enemies. Like all other Britons, I had been brought up to regard a spy as the personification of low down, treacherous, underhanded meanness, and when, in schoolboy literature, I read of spies being hunted down and hanged, my sympathies were with the men who did the hanging. But it is one thing to read about a ragged, misshapen brute, with a slouching gait and a shifty eye, being justly condemned to death, and another thing to find oneself side by side with a splendid specimen of womanhood— physically, at any tabs—and to know that you have handed her over to the vengeance of a crowd of remorseless criminals.
There was obviously only one part. I had got her into trouble. I must get her out of it.
"What, then, are your movements, so far as you have been able to arrange?" I asked in as kindly a tone as I could adopt.
"For the last two days I have acted merely as occasion prompts," she said, looking up for the first time since I called her a spy. "I saw that De Risque suspects me, and I took the first train I could get to Berlin, intending to get back to St Petersburg by a circuitous route, having left word at the pension in Paris that I received a summons and unexpected engagement as French governess in a wealthy family. I was up at the railway station to get information about the trains, when I saw the men loitering about, and I took refuge in a ladies' waiting-room on one of the side platforms. As I chanced to look through the window, I saw you looking out of the carriage door, and a sudden inspiration seized me to warn you. I saw that no official happened to be standing near your door, and I rushed out just as the train moved. De Risque, you say, was on the platform. He had come to watch you."
"Then he will watch in vain," I said; "I have only taken a ticket to the Junction, and my destination after that is a good way from the busy haunts of man. If he is not in the train you are safe for the present."
"I do not think he is in the train. It would have been too hazardous to board it at the pace it was moving, even if the officials did not intervene. And now that you have told me your story, will you make yourself comfortable again and let us talk over matters calmly? Your main object at present is to get to St. Petersburg. There you will be protected by your—colleagues."
"Yes, I shall be as safe as a prisoner, and the Empress Dowager may release me from my oath. But we are many miles from St. Petersburg, and I dare not ask the protection of the police in any other country—"
The police! Good idea! Surely that was the right thing to do. And I urged the Countess to let me appeal to them at the next station.
"You do not understand," she said sadly. "My orders are imperative. I must on no account reveal my identity. I am dealing with a Secret Society today; to-morrow I may be—"
Again she averted her eyes, and I understood. Beneath my breath I cursed a system of Government that would draw women into work of this sort. The wretched lady I saw in a moment was running a terrible risk in confiding her secret even to me. If we lived through this hideous business, and I saw her again in the Courts of my own country, I should never be able to divest myself of the suspicion that she was there as a spy. In England that would only mean social ostracism. But if she had to tell her tale to Continental police, they might take a different view of their duty. Scheme after scheme I invented as the train rushed on, and each was discarded as impracticable so soon as I began to reason out details. By sheer force of circumstances I drifted into the plan of doing nothing. So long as the train went on, the woman would have to come on also. And why should she not come on?
I had stumbled upon the one only solution of the problem. She must come on with me to Herr Von Grahaun. Between us we must invent some plausible reason for her journey unattended, and for inflicting an uninvited guest upon Von Grahaun. The latter task would not be difficult His hospitable instincts would settle that, if we could once satisfy his inherited Scottish sense of propriety.
"I will take you to St Petersburg," I said at length, turning to the Countess. "But you must come with me as the guest of my friends for a couple of days, and we will come through Berlin together. I must come to Berlin before I set out for St. Petersburg. But we will devise some plot between now and then for concealing our movements from your—friends."
"But De Risque; if De Risque should see us?'
"I will shoot him like a dog, at sight," I said, pulling out my silver-mounted revolver, which I always carry with me when I travel on delicate missions. "And I will argue the matter out with whoever cares to interfere afterwards."
"What was that?" said the Countess, starting up as I quietly replaced my weapon in a handy pocket. One of the communication doors had closed with a slight bang, and I had sprung towards it. But when I opened it nobody was in sight in the corridor beyond.
"THE catch of the door had got loose," I explained to the Countess, as I strolled back. "And now that we have made up our minds what to do, let us trouble ourselves no more at the moment about our worries and perplexities. When we get to the Junction, we shall probably be able to get a meal of some sort, but I have fortified myself meantime, with a little basket of provisions gathered promiscuously from the store at the hotel. The waiter has made me up a composite sort of dish, and whether, Empires flourish or crumble, the loyal subjects of all races must eat."
The impromptu meal served to divert my companion's attention for a while, and I endeavoured to attract her into a commonplace conversation on society small talk. All Russian ladies are interested in the doings of the English aristocracy, if only for the sake of the Czaritza, and Countess Blaveski was too young to have lost interest in these things, in spite of her political associations. As we talked I could see she was leading an artificial life, that with all her fierce devotion to the work of her Royal mistress her heart yearned after the freedom of British domesticity. As I sketched out to her the average movements of a British lady, roaming at pleasure in the busy haunts of London society, or resting in the quietude of the Scottish mountains and the English and Irish valleys, she listened with the wondering admiration of a child to a fairy tale.
Not until she reached the Junction would I permit her to talk again of our joint perplexities, although goodness knows I felt them keenly enough myself.
I had some little difficulty with the strictly official German collector about her ticket, but leaving him to suppose that she had lost it, or got confused, a little deception which she aided by professing not to understand German, I managed to compound the matter after paying the usual excess as a fine for her negligence.
At the Junction I decided, after looking up the timetable, that our best plan was to go ahead in the same train and double back. It would mean arriving at Van Grahaun's late at night, but if his coachman had got tired, and given me up, I could engage some sort of conveyance to the village. The slamming of that door was worrying me a good deal more than I cared to admit. I had not left the Countess for a moment. Our tickets for the continuation of the journey were purchased by an official, but I noticed with some alarm that nobody else got out at the Junction except a few natives. If we had a pursuer on the train, therefore, he would be still in it. But for my companion, I would have taken a walk along the corridor. As it was, there was nothing to be done but to sit and wait.
We went as far as our new tickets carried us, and then, determined to bring matters to an issue, I bustled the Countess out just as the train was moving off. The stationmaster, with proper German regard for order, rushed up and soundly scolded us, but I bore the good man's anger with unqualified fortitude. For as the last carriage rolled slowly towards us I saw a man, who had been on the point of getting out pushed smartly back by an official, and the white face of De Risque turned in protest as the stalwart guard banged the door and stood on the footboard beside it till the train had steamed out of the station.
Representing to the stationmaster, who, when he had vented his official wrath, was really a kindly person, that we were on an errand of mercy to a friend in trouble, I got him to help me in sketching out a plan for starting at once for our destination. We had missed our meal at the Junction, but the cold snack in the train would have to serve. There was no train back for some time, and I at once perceived that in this very train De Risque would return.
But the stationmaster, with many guttural ejaculations of "So," pointed out that by driving across country to another station we could catch a train running from the Junction down to the Bavarian main line, and by travelling from that point would be able to reach the village near Von Grahaun's estate somewhere about nightfall. With as ample an exhibition of gratitude as my undemonstrative British nature would permit, I thanked the worthy Prussian, and, stimulating the driver of the two bony horses with many marks, we got across country as fast as possible in the best carriage the little town could provide. Now at last we were able to travel in something like comfort, and as I lit a cigar, by permission of the Countess, I began to forget the Organisation of Combat and to devote myself to the immediate need for explaining my relations with the Countess to Von Grahaun. It hardly looked like a promising subject at first sight but to an Englishman with a good cigar after a square meal, nothing is impossible.
The old story about a sister obviously was no good here, because Von Grahaun knew our family too well, and the 'cousin' was no good either. Some other story would have to be invented, but why tell a story at all? Why not tell the truth? The trouble about that was that the Countess would not consent to the whole truth.
We were still without a solution when we got to our next station and changed for the Bavarian train. The Countess, stepping out of the carriage, looked instinctively round the platform, and missed the hand that I held out to her. With a little shriek of pain, she stumbled on the platform, and as she moved along the platform with me, limped slightly for a few paces.
"Have you hurt yourself?" I asked, apprehensively.
"No, no. Just a very slight twist. I sprained my ankle very badly a little while ago, getting out of a train, and had to seek the hospitality of some friends, who nursed me till I was able to continue my journey. It has been weak ever since, and a sudden jerk gives me just a little temporary pain. But it is quite better now, I assure you."
"Good! Pardon me, Countess, that exclamation did not refer, of course, to your troubles with your ankle, but it has given me an idea. I will explain later."
When we had again got comfortably seated in the train, I thus expounded my newly devised plan:—
"At the village station you must sprain your ankle again. Not in reality, of course, but you must come as near the real thing as you can without giving yourself pain. Your ticket will have to be for some few stations beyond, and you understand that from this moment you are really paying a visit to some friends—you can surely think of somebody you know in Bavaria—and your maid with your luggage has gone before."
I have long since made up my mind that the way to live to old age is never to settle more than one point at a time, and, having got your main line fixed, to refrain from worrying about minor considerations. Thus, having given the Countess her part, I left the rest to fate, and fate in this case was as kind as usual.
At the final railway station I found the gentle Fräulein was waiting to receive me, but her genial father was nowhere about as I glanced hurriedly along the platform when the train steamed in. Our carriage happened to stop just opposite where Flora Von Grahaun was standing.
"You will have ten minutes to wait here, Countess. Won't you come out for a little fresh air?" I said in a voice loud enough for Flora to hear. The Countess understood, and stepping smartly out missed the footboard.
With a cry of pain she leaned heavily on my arm, and Flora, in the goodness of her sweet nature, dispensed with formal introductions.
"Has the lady hurt herself?" she said, rushing forward.
"I am afraid I have sprained my ankle," said the Countess. "It has been weak for some time."
Flora and I helped her to a seat on the platform, and she limped along as real as life, I am bound to say conscience gave me a bit of a twinge as I saw the genuine look of compassion in Flora's soft blue eyes; but there was no time to alter our plans now.
"I shall feel better, perhaps, after a minutes' rest," said the Countess, and what with the many suggestions for immediate relief from Flora, the consternation of the simple old Frau who was with her, and the Countess's apologies for giving them so much trouble, we easily allowed several minutes to slip away.
As the officials called upon the passengers to take their seats, the Countess jumped up suddenly, and then, with a scream of agony, sank back again on the seat.
"I have lost my train," she moaned as the carriages rumbled by one by one. And now came the moment for the supreme effort at prevarication.
Drawing Flora aside. I explained to her, in a whisper that Countess Blaveski was a lady whom I had met in St Petersburg and in London, and that we had accidentally met in the train.
"And now that she has met with this distressing accident I hardly know how to advise her."
Flora accepted the situation with all the bewitching simplicity that was part of her lovable nature.
"Nothing could be simpler." she said. "I am sorry your friend is in pain, otherwise I would be glad she has missed her train. My father this morning found it necessary to go to St. Petersburg very suddenly. His business was urgent, or he would have waited to receive you. He must be away, too, for some little time, and I am to follow him as soon as possible. It was most unfortunate after we had invited you here, but now I shall be delighted with the society of the Countess, for a day or two until she is well enough to resume her journey. We will all drive to the forest together, if the Countess can endure a ride in our simple carriage over the stony roads."
Leave things to chance, and you will blunder through somehow! Never was there a better example of this philosophy. Had the Countess not been with me, a bed at the village inn would have been my portion that night, and I should have been compelled to get back to Berlin, leaving Flora and her servants to their preparations for St. Petersburg. Now we had with us a married lady, who could not be expected to travel for a day or two, and all things were working for the happiness of everybody.
We were a merry party as we drove through the wood and landed eventually at Von Grahaun's delightful, country house.
"I am afraid our little shooting box will compare unfavourably with palaces of St. Petersburg." said Flora as we helped the Countess out of the carriage, "But on behalf of my father I am proud to offer you such hospitality as is possible so far from a big town."
The Countess, with that grace and charm which had made her a favourite at Court, completely won the confidence of this simple country girl. There was one point upon which Flora was not communicative. She would not speak of her father's business in Petersburg more than to say that it was urgent and he was bound to go at once.
I thought the Countess almost came to an exhibition of bad taste in gentle efforts she made to renew the subject from time to time.
"Is your friend Von Grahaun a German?" she asked me when Flora at one point had left the room to superintend some domestic arrangements.
"No, he is pretty much of a Scotsman by blood and sympathy, as you will observe by the fact that he given his only child a Scottish name."
"And the Scotch are a democratic people, I believe?"
"Surely, Countess," I said, with a laugh, "you can leave politics till we get back to St. Petersburg? Your country has no need to fear my little Flora and her dear old father."
"Your little Flora?"
I had used the personal pronoun unthinkingly, and quite as a figure speech, but as the Countess repeated the words, "Your little Flora," there was a look of mingled surprise and anger in her eyes that instinctively alarmed me. An intuitive whisper in my brain told me I was to be the subject of trouble between two women. It might be flattering to one's vanity, but it is not a nice feeling, I can assure you.
Throughout the evening, I caught the Countess staring at Flora, critically examining her flaxen hair, bright, natural complexion, and her winsome blue eyes, the gifts of a mingled German and Scottish parentage. And once, when I caught her looking from Flora to myself, her whole expression changed from hard criticism to a tenderness I did not like to define.
As the evening advanced, Flora in her sweet cultured voice sang to us some delightful Scotch ballads, which her grandfather had taught her, and gave us also some of the glorious music of her own country's great composers. As I sat and listened with rapt admiration I could not suppress, I felt the glittering eyes of the Countess following my every expression.
In response to a request from Flora supported by an urgent appeal from myself, the Countess herself sat down at the piano, and, in tones full of romance and power sang one of the thrilling compositions which have beauty that fascinates, but terrifies rather than pleases. It was as though the whole tragic history of her life were thrown into the music. Instead of listening to the words or following the chords of her highly cultured voice, one's mind wandered to plots and bloodshed and blighted destinies. Flora's songs were soothing, the music of the Countess was ill- omened and terrifying.
As I stepped forward to turn over the music for her, I felt my own heart palpitating even faster than it had done the other night when I stood face to face with death.
For a while after the Russian singer had finished a shadow seemed to fall over our little party, and with an obvious sense of relief Flora accepted the suggestion of the Countess, who remarked that she would rest after her journey.
Leaning heavily on the Fräulein's arm, the stately woman limped off to bed.
My own room. I found, was in a corner of the old building that looked along the roadway in the wood through which we had travelled. It was an old house, and in the days of chivalry had done duty as a castle in feudal wars. The Von Grahauns had renovated it and brought it more up-to-date but the apartment allotted to me happened to be in the old portion of the building. The little window was almost like the look-out of a fortress, the strong stone pillars sheltered the recess, and a man might barricade himself here against a small army.
Physically tired by the journey, my mind was excited and restless after the stirring events of the last few days. When I entered the Diplomatic Service I expected adventure of a sort but this was becoming just a little faster and more furious than I had bargained for. I hate scenes, especially scenes where women are concerned, and here was I with at least one woman on my hands for whose safe conduct I was morally responsible. There was no question about it. I must see the Countess safely lodged under police protection at St. Petersburg. But how much would I have given had the beautiful creature never jeopardised her life for me!
Drawing a chair into the little round window, and looking out into the clear moonlight, I pictured her over again as I saw her in St. Petersburg two years ago. The weird fascination of her song still hung over me, and as I thought and thought I gradually found myself contrasting her overpowering art with Flora's simple ballads. There was beauty in both without a doubt. Flora's the beauty of the rippling brook on a bright summer's day, the Countess's of the wild thunderstorm at war on a winter's night.
In my dreamy wakefulness my thoughts began to crystallise themselves into actual figures forming in the moonlight in the wood beyond. From tree to tree they flitted, and as I watched them it dawned upon me that they were not the figures of women but of men.
Their movements were suspicious, and the first thought that occurred to me was that they were poachers. I had no idea what the game laws may be like in Germany, but I suppose so long as game exists in any country, and so long as it is preserved, so long will there be clandestine hunting by the old and young 'sports' of the lower classes. I was not there to play the part of gamekeeper to my old friend Von Grahaun, and I am bound to admit that in my own country I have a sneaking sympathy with the poacher, which earns me the reputation of a renegade among my county friends.
Still there are poachers and poachers, and in this lonely spot it might be as well to keep an eye on these night owls for an hour or so, especially as I did not feel particularly inclined to sleep.
Getting behind one of the little curtains, and cutting a slit in it, which considering the delicate texture, was, I fear, an act of wicked domestic vandalism, I watched the flitting forms, and very soon discovered that there were more than two of them, and with a sportsman's eye I was not long in finding out that they were not trapping game.
Leaving the rest in a bunch under a monster bush, one of them advanced cautiously into the open. He had apparently carefully noted the courtyard and kept as far away from it as possible. So long as he did this, the dogs would be quiet, and with extreme caution he silently but swiftly made his way round the corner of the house where my room was situated. To watch his movements I had to twist my head and the curtain with it, at various angles, and when he got well under the wall of the house it became necessary to take all risks and put my head out of the window. Immediately a warning cry went up from the wood, and the pioneer of the party doubled back towards his companions.
I whipped out my revolver, and a cry of pain escaped the man. One of the shots had winged him, but he kept running, and put himself out of serious harm's way.
MY revolver shots had the effect of rousing the household. The dogs began howling, and very quickly lights sprang up in the other rooms.
Opening the door I shouted to Flora, and told her to bring everybody with her into this wing of the house.
In a dainty dressing-gown she quickly found her way in my direction, followed by the old Frau who had accompanied her to the station.
"Your house is being attacked by burglars," I said, getting to the point at once. "I have injured one of them, and I do not think they will come back again now that they are discovered. But it may be as well to make an inspection of the place for safety. What servants have you here?"
"Burglars!" said Flora, opening her eyes widely and shrugging her shoulders with an air of doubt. "I think you are mistaken. The people in the countryside are too honest and too simple, and the bad men from the big towns would not come here to steal. We are too far from them."
"But has you father any enemies?"
I said this in German, realising that prompt information was necessary, and it might be as well to let the servants understand at once what we were talking about.
The old Frau lifted her hands in hasty denial. "Mein Herr Grahaun has no enemies," she said. "He is too good, too kind. His neighbours love him too much."
"Then how are we to account for the suspicious movement of these men at this hour of the night?" I said, walking to the window and taking another look. The marauders were evidently holding a council of war. I could see them in the distance huddling themselves as close as possible at the root of a big tree. There were about half a dozen of them, so far as I could make out, and if there were neither burglars nor personal enemies of Von Grahaun, what in mischief were they doing there?
The answer was supplied in the terror-stricken face of Countess Blaveski, who, in response to a summons from a maid sent to her room, appeared in the doorway just as I turned from the window. Unable to suppress her eagerness, she rushed across the room and looked out of the window. "They have found us!" she whispered hoarsely.
In an instant it flashed across me, incredible as it seemed, that De Bisque and his accomplices had tracked us in spite of our twistings and turnings. Clutching the Countess by the shoulder, I pulled her away from the window, and at that moment the sound of a rifle shot rang out in the wood and a bullet struck the stonework of the window.
"Keep back everybody!" I shouted, and rushing towards an old- fashioned full-length mirror moved it up towards the window in such a position that the outlook was reflected in it. So long as the men remained where they were, in the direct line of vision, we should be able to see what they were doing by the help of the lights which the servants had brought with them.
"What people have you in the house?" I asked Flora again. "How many men have you?"
"Only old Fritz and Frederick. As we do not know how long we shall be in St. Petersburg, we had allowed the other men-servants to visit their homes, and the house will be shut up when I follow my father."
"You are not well protected for such a lonely spot," I remarked.
"We do not need protection... People around us are all our friends."
"Can any of them be summoned?"
It was quite clear that with the help of two other men I could easily protect the women till daylight, but I had a notion not only of defence but of attack; the lust of battle was creeping on me, and I wanted to head a raid and capture some of these fellows.
Flora looked around at the old man Fritz, who by this time had joined the group. The venerable retainer shook his head. The nearest farm was the other side of the wood and he would not like to leave the Fräulein.
"We can keep off the scoundrels ourselves, mein Herr. We have some muskets in the house; Frederick has just returned from his exercises with the army and I still know how to shoot." He was a scarred old veteran who had fought in the Franco-Prussian War, and had also fought the Prussians when Bavaria was at enmity with her present-day partner.
On second thoughts, the advice of the old man was wise. After all, my business was not to seek out glory for myself, but to protect these womankind for whom circumstances had made me responsible. I therefore suggested to Flora that we should concentrate in this room, which seemed the most suitable for defensive purposes. The ladies and maid-servants must make up their minds to remain there for the night, sleeping if they could on the chairs and couches which we could bring in from the other room. Fritz and Frederick and myself would have to keep armed watch at various parts of the house, and I warned both the old man and the young conscript that they were dealing with men with whom they must hold no parley. "Shoot first, and argue afterwards," I said finally as we prepared to plan out our beats.
By the mirror I saw that our assailants had shifted their position from the direct line of the window, and for a long time there was an ominous silence, a silence I did not like. And with frequent calls at the old room, and many warnings to the women to keep away from the window, I steadily paced from the remnant of the old castle to the modern portion of the house which Von Grahaun had erected.
The dogs in the yard were straining at their collars and growling angrily, and it suddenly occurred to me that a good plan would be to set them loose. I was about to open the door leading to that portion of the ground, when old Fritz, who was with me at the moment, laid a warning hand on my shoulder.
"Don't show yourself, mein Herr, till you know where they are. The moon is too bright, and they will be able to spot you."
"But if we set the dogs loose they will quickly scent them, and we shall then be able to advance upon them while they are fighting the animals."
As I said this I opened the door and I slipped quietly out, making towards the nearest dog, a huge mastiff, that was prancing on its hind legs and pawing the air in its efforts to break loose. The old man was right. The cunning rascals, instead of silencing the dogs, had left them as a temptation to us. I had hardly got through the door when old Fritz grabbed me by the coat tails and pulled me smartly back. At that very moment another shot rang out from the rising ground overlooking the courtyard, and a bullet struck the woodwork above the door. Fritz slammed the door as he jerked me inside, and another shot sent a second bullet against the door itself.
"They are using shooting club rifles," said Fritz, "small and handy, and dangerous at short range. We must keep them at a distance."
It was well for us all that the old campaigner was there to advise. The idea of being bottled up by a gang of ruffians like this so preyed upon my combative instincts that I wanted to make a sortie on my own behalf.
"Remember the Fräulein, mein Herr," said the old man, as I pulled angrily at the door. And this brought me to my senses. Hurrying back to the improvised citadel, I assured the ladies that no harm had been done by the last shot. Both Fräulein and the Countess were waiting to receive me, Flora sympathetic and anxious, the Countess panting and agitated, with a look of passionate enquiry in her glittering eyes.
"You have been in danger," she said, rushing towards me as I came into the room.
"Oh, dear no. Calm yourself, Countess, there is really no danger for any of us."
"You do not know these men," she said. "They do not value their own lives, or the lives of other people. They will stop at nothing."
"But I have something here that will stop them," I said, tapping, the rifle with which Fritz had armed me.
As I said this I looked round casually at Flora. She had noticed that the Countess had lost her limp, and she had heard the words that had passed between us. There was a distant dignity and reserve about her attitude towards both of us as she calmly proceeded to make suggestions and arrangements for interesting the servants and providing refreshments.
"It is evident, Mr. Gascoigne, that tonight will be a vigil for us all," she went on, and, turning to the Countess, she said, "Can I not induce you to appropriate this couch? I am afraid you will be overstraining yourself after your accident."
"No, I cannot rest. I must bear my part in the work. Let me do something. Do let me do something."
In her excitement she had moved swiftly across the room, and for an instant her shapely head was in direct line with the window. There was a rifle shot from the forest, and the Countess, with an involuntary cry of pain, pressed her hand to the side of her head. A little stream of blood trickled down her neck as she staggered to a sofa. Flora, forgetting her reserve, in womanly tenderness, stepped forward and pressed her handkerchief to the wound. It was only a slight scratch at the side of the head, a skin wound, but another half inch and it would have struck her on the temple.
I again cautioned them all to keep well away from the window, and went off to see if I could get a sight of any of the men from any other protected part of the building.
The men who were keeping watch outside knew their business as well as those of us who were inside. If either of us passed a window in the corridor, splash went the glass as a bullet came through. They kept us going from one part of the building to another, and gave us no single opportunity of a good look out for reconnoitering purposes. It was a hideous experience. I felt like a rat in a hole with a terrier watching the exit. If one could have got out and met them hand to hand, it would have been possible even to exchange shots with them on anything like fair terms, and there might have been sport for all of us. As it was, the sport was all on the one side.
There was another long period of silence, and I began to think they had drawn off. But as I suggested it to Fritz, he said quietly:
"Listen to the dogs, mein Herr."
The faithful brutes were still growling and pulling at their chains. Instinct told them there were enemies about, and their quick ears caught the stealthy movements of the blackguards who were flitting from point to point, watching an opportunity to pot one of us through a window.
"Fritz! Fritz! Mein Herr! Mein Herr!"
It was Frederick's voice shouting out from the back of the house, and we made our way quickly towards him.
"They are near us now," he said. "I heard them at the south door."
This was interesting news. If they were going to rush us by storm there would at any rate be some chance of a stand-up fight, and that was exactly what I wanted. This weary vigil with nothing to do was positively intolerable.
"Keep quiet," I said to the youth, "and let them get in if they can. As soon as they appear, shoot, and then fall back with me towards the room where the ladies are."
The big blue eyes of the Bavarian lad gleamed in anticipation. Like myself, he was young, and his blood was hot. He had no greater liking than myself for this undignified and un- sportsmanlike game of hide-and-seek.
There was no further attempt, however, to force the door, and again there was another long, tantalising silence, broken at last by a sudden movement of Frederick, who had been looking out through a small hole in one of the back windows. Bursting open the shutter and the window with it, the big lad was out in the open before either Fritz or myself could restrain him. There was a struggle and much grunting and swearing, and rushing to the door I pulled it open. Whatever the consequences might be, I was not prepared to stop under cover while another man was risking his life.
A blinding, suffocating cloud of smoke blew in as the door closed. I understood now the meaning of this stealthy silence. They had been piling up dry wood outside the door, and were setting it alight. Truly, the Countess said, they would stop at nothing.
Frederick was struggling with a couple of hairy men. Their comrades in the distance evidently dare not shoot because they could not make sure of hitting the right man.
The big strong youth had one of his opponents by the throat, and the other was desperately struggling to break his hold. Much as I would have liked to make sure of one of the scoundrels, I saw in a moment that the first thing to be done was to stop the fire. Rushing at the heap of dried wood, I kicked it right and left away from the door.
My clothes caught on fire, and throwing myself flat on the ground in order that the flames might not get at my vitals I shouted to old Fritz to throw something over me. The old fellow, gathering up some loose rugs, smothered the flames and I sprang to my feet. Fortunately the cloud of smoke and dust from the scattered wood hid us from the enemy. Frederick, on seeing my danger, had relinquished his hold on his prisoner and turned to my assistance. Instantly the two men had bolted, and so we returned to the house empty-handed. A small hose kept in the house for immediate use in case of fire was promptly dragged to the spot, and a dash of water about the portals of the door effectually prevented the spread of the flames.
Tho miscreants were baulked at one point, but it was impossible to say where they would break out next. They might be attacking some other part of the house even while we were waiting, and I found it necessary to commandeer the womenfolk for sentry duty. The girls were not at all displeased at the prospect of doing some work. Flora had been keeping their spirits up by singing to them, telling them stories, and assuring them there was nothing to fear. But as the night advanced, even, their young mistress failed to keep them interested.
Warning them over and over again not to look out, but to listen and come to me if they heard anything, I posted them at each door, wherever there was a window too high for them to be seen through. The marauders had given up this idea of shooting us like rats in a trap, and were now bent, I could see, on setting fire to the place, and shooting the Countess and myself as we escaped from the flames.
Morning was fortunately advancing now, and daylight would put an end to their plots in the course of an hour or two. But well I knew that in these two hours our watch would have to be redoubled. Blistered and aching from my burns, I moved from room to room. I had used up what ointments and liniments in the house I could lay hands on without appealing to Flora; the situation was bad enough without telling her I was hurt.
It was not long in coming. I had warned the girls not to scream out but to come and tell me quietly if they heard anything; but to tell a girl not to scream is one thing, to ensure that she will not do it is another. This particular lass was stationed with a companion under a window in the western part of the house, and, daring and desperate as the night went on with their work unaccomplished, one of the men had climbed up and put his head through the window.
If only the girl had slipped quietly away and fetched us, we should have captured him. Her screams, however put him on his guard, and when we got back he had disappeared. The door of a lumber room opposite the window in which was stored a lot of paper, rags, and loose rubbish, was open, but I did not at the moment notice that. Lifting myself cautiously up to the corner of the window, I peered out. One of the men was taking shelter behind a tree, and had reached safety before I could get a shot at him.
"Don't cry out next time, my girl," I said, as kindly as my disappointment would permit me, and as I was passing on to another point to renew the same warning to the other watchers a fizz and an explosion brought me back to the room where the rubbish was stored.
"Call Fritz and Frederick," I said to the girl as I dashed into the room. This particular part of the house was a narrow connecting link between the kitchen offices and the drawing- rooms; it was only one room and a passage in breadth, and there was a window on the other side. As I burst into the room there was a report from some brushwood outside and the bullet just grazed my shoulder. I leapt back into the passage and pulled the door to, sufficient to conceal me.
This was a new development indeed. The ingenious scoundrels had opened some cartridges, and with the powder had manufactured a miniature bomb. The fellow who had climbed up to the window had set it alight and thrown it into the room, while his companions on the other side were waiting to shoot us down as we went in to put out the flames.
Even while I was thinking matters out in this speedy fashion the fire began to spread rapidly, and I saw at once that unless something were done the place would be in a blaze. The window was broad, and practically came down to the floor; the man or men in the brushwood covered it with their short rifles as completely as though it were an open space outside.
Frederick wanted to rush the position, break into the room, burst open the window, and, musket in hand, charge the ambuscade. The struggle outside the door had fired his fighting instincts, and I am bound to say I felt a good deal of sympathy with him. The steady old Fritz, however, counselled prudence, and appealed to Flora. Her ready wit solved the problem.
In one of the old rooms was a huge metal fire-screen. Many hands quickly rolled this to the spot, and pushing it before us, Frederick and I made our way into the room. Lifting it, shoving it, and wriggling it among the rubbish, we got well up to the window. It almost covered the whole of the lower part, and behind it we set to work at extinguishing the flames. The small hand- hose subdued the blaze that was beginning to break out, but it did not cover sufficient space to keep the smouldering fire thoroughly under.
The maids were sent off for pails of water, while Fritz and I stood sentinel on either side of the screen, in case of mischief from without. At one moment, when we were all busy watching the slowly deadening flames, a cry from one of the girls drew my attention to the window. A fierce face was to be seen just above the fire-screen. One of the wretches was actually standing on the back of another and peering in at the top. As our attention was called to him, he jumped down, but not before he had smashed the glass and thrown another little ball of lighted wool filled with gunpowder. Old Fritz pounced on this and made to throw it into the passage. It exploded in his hand and burnt his bony old fingers horribly.
Frederick could contain himself no longer. Rushing round the back of the screen, he kicked the window open with his heavy boot and scrambled after the retreating figure. Again he grappled one of them, but as I dashed out to his assistance I saw the glint of cold steel in the dim morning light, and Frederick loosened his grip. His assailant broke away from him, and my first business now was to drag him back to a place of safety. Fortunately, our assailants were too much occupied in getting away from the fierce young soldier to turn their rifles on us. We got back to the house, and Flora, with her own hands, dressed the poor lad's wound. The knife had gone into his shoulder, but fortunately in the fleshy part. We finished that fight, therefore, with two of our party slightly wounded and with the enemy practically uninjured.
It was, on the whole, the most disappointing battle I had ever taken part in, but we held the fort.
Daylight was breaking, and the men would have to scatter before the countryside was astir.
"I think you may safely let your people take their rest now," I said to Flora. "Some of them had better remain a little longer on duty, and possibly you can send for some assistance now to keep on watch while they also rest."
With a formal nod of acquiescence, Fräulein Von Grahaun put my suggestions into effect.
"And you yourself, Flora," I said, when for a moment or two, we were alone, "you must rest. I fear the events of the night must have been a terrible strain on you."
"I must see that my patients are all right before I can leave them, Mr. Gascoigne. I have ordered another room to be set at your disposal; the one you were to have occupied, I am afraid, is a little upset. I will see you again later, and we can then discuss other arrangements."
She walked away and left me standing in absolute amazement. This frigid politeness was a new experience. I never dreamt Flora capable of it towards me.
I DARE not lie down; for I should wake up too stiff to move, and there was a good deal of work to be done to-day.
In the first place I must get back to Berlin. The Countess must come with me, and Flora as well, Flora ought not to be left alone in this out-of-the-way spot even when the real objects of the attack by the Organisation of Combat had left the house.
While I was thinking these things over, pacing up and down the room where Flora had sung her little Scotch ballads to us in the early evening the Countess came into the room.
"Have they gone?" she asked in a terrified whisper.
I pointed quietly through the window to the rising sun.
"Nature has come to our aid, Countess. Their deeds are evil, and the light of day is not good for them."
"But they will return?"
"No, they will not return. They will be hunted like wild beasts as soon as the countryside is aroused. The people will be not less anxious than the police—"
"The police?"
"Yes, the police, of course, will have to be sent for."
"Then there will inquiries," said the Countess. "I know the method of the German officials. They will take the names of every one of us. We shall have to give them all particulars, and we must be away before they come."
"Impossible!"
"I must if you are not. I have told you what my instructions are. On no account must I reveal my identity, and a fictitious name will not serve with the German police. They may even detain us all here pending inquiries, and—"
I had not thought of that. It would hardly suit my instructions either to be kept here for two or three days. I, too, must get hack to Berlin without seeing the police.
Nobody had been sent for them yet, and there was still time for us to depart, but what should I say to Flora? How could our position be explained? What was I to do about last light's prevarication? The Countess would be expected, of course, to resume her journey and go to her alleged friends.
By this time it was practically broad daylight, and a morning pipe and a walk in the open air might sharpen my wits. Those of the servants who had not gone to bed were busy putting the house in order; Frederick was sleeping after a loss of blood and weakness from his wound; old Fritz was rubbing his burnt hands with grease; and Flora was still busy superintending everything. Nobody saw me stroll off from the house, and without enquiring the way to anywhere I wandered aimlessly into the forest.
The twittering birds and the fresh morning air were a mental and physical tonic, and I stepped out briskly into one of the bypaths that led through a mass of beautiful autumn foliage. The more complicated things became as I tried to fathom a way out of the difficulty, the faster I walked. I must have covered several miles, for I had been walking almost a couple of hours, before I began to think about finding my way back to the house.
When I reached a clearing in the wood, with a cross-post pointing to various directions, I looked about me and saw I was on the bank of a delightful little stream that ended in a pool not far from the main path. Stepping off the road, I wandered down the side of the bank to the brook, and going down on my hands and knees bathed my face in the delightful, refreshing water.
A huge moss-covered rock by the side of the stream presented so inviting a seat that for the first time for some hours I allowed my aching bones to rest. I had pushed a chunk of bread and cold meat in my pocket before I came out in case the morning air should make me too hungry to wait for breakfast, and I leisurely ate this as I watched the meandering stream ripple by.
The bank took a bend just at the point where I was sitting, and the rock was at such an angle that I commanded a view of the road running in one direction, but was absolutely out of view myself in the overhanging bushes. At any rate, here was peace for a few minutes, and the fascination of quietude took such a hold on me that I sat on after I had finished my food and thrown the scraps to the grateful birds on the opposite bank.
At length I braced myself for a big effort to rise from my seat. The sound of approaching carriage wheels, however, caught my attention at that moment, and not wishing to be bothered with strangers, I sat back to wait till the early risers had driven by.
Instead of passing along the beaten road, the carriage pulled up at the open space, and a man in a heavy overcoat, with a collar round his ears, stepped out. The carriage passed on, and he paced up and down the clearing with a military stride I surely had seen before. He looked at his watch and then along the road in the opposite direction, from whence in a minute or two I heard carriage wheels approaching. From my resting-place I could not see this other arrival, but I imagined from what I heard that he also alighted from his carriage and ordered it to withdraw some distance off.
"Before your time as usual, I see," said one of the men, in French.
"I am always punctual," retorted the other in a sharp self- confident tone. "Shall we walk a little way into the wood? It is not likely that any other persons will be about this morning at this point, but we will get off the high road within call of our people."
The two men walked along till they were practically just above my head. I hardly liked the idea of listening to their conversation, but as it did not concern me, and in all probability I should forget all about it as soon as I could get rid of them and be off, it did not very much matter.
"It is understood," said the man with the sharp voice, "that this conversation is entirely without prejudice, absolutely private, and so far as every other person is concerned, has not taken place."
"All these things are imperative on my side, at any rate," retorted the other. "If my friends knew and if your friends knew—"
"Do not trouble about my friends. I can look after them in any case. And while it is perhaps no part of my duty to lecture you, I may remark that if you cared more for your duties and less for what your friends think of your duties there would be far less trouble in your household."
"Circumstances are different," replied the other speaker in a tired, weak voice. "Our traditions are not the same. You are a servant with full power, I am a master with no power."
"Then why meet me at all? Have you the will to do as you are advised? The object is rather to know exactly what are our relative positions. You know the circumstances as well as I do. If one were free to act without taking into account the possibilities of other people's actions, it would be easier to know what one should do."
There was a note of impatience in the voice of the first arrival, and I could hear him tapping his boot with the short staff he carried.
"Act for yourself and think afterwards," he said.
"That is your way, I know; but we are of different natures. You act on impulse and never look back. I torture myself with thought before I act and when I have acted I am haunted with doubt as to whether I have acted right. Even your enemies appear to forgive you when you are indiscreet. Even my friends only watch their opportunity to take advantage of my mistakes. Why was I not born to roam in these woods a forester or a farmer, or something of the kind?"
"Because your destiny was for something else. But, tell me, what are you going to do? Will you play the part of a man of will or will you vacillate and hesitate to the hurt and injury of yourself and of everybody else? On these matters we must all be united."
"Then you will not take advantage of any misfortune that may arise through my seeming to court trouble?"
"The privileges and prerogatives of our class are the heritage of us all. Surrendered by one they compromise the other. Make what concessions you think just. I am afraid it is hardly practical to ask you to act as you think best. You are too fond of taking the advice of others. But on your own responsibility, or on that of those whom you may consider your best friends, act fearlessly and you shall be—"
"Supported?"
"Supported is, of course, a strong word. It will be no part of my duty to openly aid and abet you, but I can promise you there shall be no interference to your detriment. Anything that may be said or done will be in sympathy with you and not in sympathy with those with whom you may come into conflict."
"And the islanders?"
"Their sympathy will be against you. Of that you may be certain. But of course you have no fear of active interference there."
"No, I suppose not. What it must be to live in such a place. To be at once a ruler and a friend. To walk in the open light of day among one's neighbours. To love and be loved, and to fear no man."
"Yes, yes, exactly. Don't moralise, my dear Nicholas. This is not an age of morals. It is an age of action. And now I am afraid we must not keep our hired lackeys waiting any longer or they will be chattering to each other. And it is not good to let the common people talk too much. Good-bye. Be strong, be firm, yield nothing, and I will stand by you."
The two men walked off to the cross-roads and beckoned their carriages. I had been listening to them with an intense interest I could not conceal. An irresistible desire to clamber up the bank and make sure of certain suspicions that were passing in my mind had come over me, and had they not walked away I might have revealed myself in my eagerness. As it was, there was no need for that. They stood in direct line to where I was sitting and turned together in my direction. I had seen them both often. I knew every line to each of their faces.
The man who had come first, the man with the sharp voice and the smart military walk, was Wilhelm, Emperor of Germany. His sad-voiced, halting companion was Nicholas, the Czar of all the Russias.
HOW the two Emperors had managed to steal off incognito and meet here in this lonely forest for their quiet domestic chat was their business. The Kaiser wandered where he liked at all times, but the gloomy man from St Petersburg must have travelled off at dead of night with the connivance of someone whom he could trust.
That temporary disclosure of his identity to me was, of course, no part of his programme. I wonder what the poor man would have felt like had he known he had poured forth the sorrows of his soul within hearing of a man in the service of the British Foreign Office. He pulled his heavy coat about him, turned up the collar; and, sinking his head till the broad-brimmed hat he wore almost touched the cloth, stepped into the closed carriage which drove up. The other man also muffled himself up and stepped into his carriage. The two drove in opposite directions, the one possibly to go to the nearest station for Berlin and take train as a German Count, the other doubtless to steal back to some quiet inn and, posing as a simple country gentleman, to embark in the darkness in a sleeping-car across the Continent to St. Petersburg.
Their meeting had considerably increased my reasons for determining to get back to Berlin and on to St. Petersburg. Something was about to happen in Russia and I must be there to see it. The information had not been intended for me, but now that I possessed it, it was clearly my duty to use it for the benefit of my own country, if any benefit was to be got out of it. Such is the fine distinction one is able to draw between public and private duty. Had it been something to one's own personal advantage it would have seemed unsportsmanlike to take advantage of an accidental chance of this kind.
The newly-developed situation had one good effect. It swamped the lesser trouble of racking my brain for an excuse to Flora. I could now plead public duty with a doubly fortified conscience, and the need for getting back to work was so urgent that I had no time to bother about social considerations.
I had carefully noted the landmarks in my windings through the forest and, doubling my energy, I pushed back even quicker than I had come. The household had undergone a marvellous change. All the lumber in the room where the fire broke out had been cleared, the place washed and scrubbed, every indication of the previous night's fracas swept away.
"I am afraid I shall have to go away at once," I said, getting to the point immediately I met Flora, "It has become necessary, too, that Countess Blaveski should go with me. The men who attacked us last night are persons who desire to—"
"Steal my jewels," said the Countess, breaking in upon us, and relieving my conscience again. She had evidently made up her story, and my better plan was to let her make the necessary explanations. Flora, however, did not press for explanations, accepted the suggestion with a polite alacrity that made me ill.
"I will order a carriage for you as soon as you desire it," she said simply. And with that she left us to talk over our other plans.
When she had gone, I stood awkwardly before the Countess for a few minutes.
"I am afraid our presence has not been an unmixed blessing to anybody," she said with a cynical smile.
I was too much worried to talk about the matter, and I allowed the taunt to pass unnoticed.
"I am sorry to hurry you," I said, "but it is imperative, as you have yourself said, that we start at once."
"I am ready this instant," she said. "Then, while we are getting some food, I will ask them to bring round the carriage."
I went off to look for Flora, and, meeting her in the passage, drew her into a sitting-room.
"I am sorry, Flora," I stammered, limply.
"Do not apologise for anything, please, Mr. Gascoigne. And do not attempt to explain anything. I am glad the night has passed without serious disaster. My father would have been very much upset had any misfortune come to a guest under his roof."
"Your father, Flora—"
"Fräulein Von Grahaun, please, Mr. Gascoigne."
"Your father," I went on, bowing stiffly at the interruption, "is in St. Petersburg doubtless by this time. May I ask when you follow him?"
"So soon as I have made all arrangements here and left the house in safe keeping.
"But can you not send for the steward, or your father's bailiff, or some functionary on the estate corresponding to those offices, and come at once with me? After what has happened last night, I do not like leaving you here."
"Have no fear. There will be willing defenders to protect the house from all harm ere long. Moreover, I do not think, from what you have told me, we are likely to be attacked again after—"
"After we have gone. No, I am quite convinced of that, or under no circumstances whatever would I consent to go. But, in spite of that, won't you come with me?"
"And with the Countess Blaveski? No."
This was terse, prompt, and decisive. There was nothing left for me but to walk out of the room and get my breakfast.
As we drove away to the station I turned and saw Flora standing on the steps of the castle. I waved my hand to her. She bowed stiffly, and I continued to look at her fair, girlish form- -a beautiful picture in the bright autumn sunshine, as she stood there with her faithful retainers about her.
"Quite a domestic paradise," said the Countess with a harsh laugh.
I leaned back in the carriage without a word, and in silence we drove through the forest to the railway-station.
Our enemies had dispersed to the four winds of Heaven with the rising sun. There was no trace of them on the railway, and with a sigh of relief I put down a book I was endeavouring to read as we steamed into the station at Berlin.
"And you can thoroughly trust your friends in this city?" I asked the Countess.
"Perfectly. Once there I shall be safe till morning."
"Do not stir in the morning until I come and fetch you. And be ready to start for St. Petersburg at once."
At the Embassy I found my superiors had all left to dress for a special function at which the Kaiser was to appear, and I was ordered to follow them there.
The stiff Court dress was torture itself to my aching skin and bones, but I went to my hotel and prepared for the reception.
The Emperor, erect and dignified, moved with an air of authority among his courtiers and guests. How I longed to whisper in his ear a fragment of what I had heard in the early morning. It would have been worth a big risk to see this self-satisfied monarch disconcerted even for a moment. My object there, however, was not to try experiments on the nerves of the Kaiser, but to seek out the official from whom I was to receive instruction.
At the moment he was chatting pleasantly with a member of the Russian Embassy, and I had to wait my opportunity. As soon as I could I told him my story. He listened with a grave face, and was keenly interested, so interested that I was emboldened to add, "So it is evident that there will not be peace in the Far East yet awhile."
"The Far East is not concerned, I think, my boy, in this. It is something nearer home. The enemies referred to are not yellow but white men, and it may be necessary for other interests to he guarded."
'"Is it your wish that I should proceed to St. Petersburg at once? I asked, anxious from every point of view to start immediately. I should never feel safe until I had handed the Countess over to her own people in St. Petersburg, although I did not tell my chief that."
He thought the matter over carefully for quite a couple of minutes, and then said slowly, "Yes, you had better go as soon as you can make it convenient, but I think, under all the circumstances, you had better not report yourself at the Embassy there for about fifteen days. We must take no risks. There may have been covering precautions taken, and until I have communicated what you have told me by other means it will be as well for you not to be seen occupied in an official capacity."
'"Then shall I start tomorrow without again reporting myself?"
"Not to-morrow, but tonight. You must get a sleeping-berth on the train."
He moved away as he said this and left me no opportunity to argue the matter.
This was a situation I had not bargained for, but there was no help for it. Leaving the Reception as soon as I could, I made my way to my hotel, sent up my belongings to the station, and then proceeded cautiously to the quarter where the Countess was staying.
I kept a close eye on everybody who came near me, and kept my hand with a revolver in it in the side pocket of my overcoat. So far, however, my pursuers had not caught up on me, and I reached the house of the Countess's friend without molestation. She had gone to bed, but when I induced her hostess to say I was waiting for her she quickly appeared, wrapped in a gorgeous dressing- gown, the bright colour of which was in striking contrast to her white face.
"You must come with me at once," I said. "I have booked sleeping-berths and I will make arrangements with the people on the train to see that you're not disturbed."
She had slept continuously through the journey during the day, and assured me she was not tired.
"We will travel in an ordinary carriage," she said. "You can sleep, and I will keep watch."
"As you will," I replied. I was dying to get my clothes off and have a comfortable rest, but I could see she was terrified at the thought of being left alone, even under the care of the railway officials.
IT suited my purpose better from a diplomatic point of view as well as from the personal aspect, to travel as an ordinary touring passenger, so although I had wasted money in booking berths which I did not care to give up, as it was not desirable to face the necessary explanation and enquiries, I took my seat in an ordinary first-class carriage, well wrapped up about the chin and with my hat well down over my eyes beside the Countess, who was very simply dressed and very heavily veiled.
Fortunately, there were not many passengers, and as soon as we had got well started on the journey weary nature asserted herself. I fell into a heavy sleep, and forgot all about diplomatists, and dynamiters, and plots, and counterplots. I had been sleeping some hours when with a very guarded but very deliberate nudge the Countess woke me up. Rubbing my eyes and trying to recollect where I was and what I was doing, I noticed that the Countess, still veiled, was listening intently. Feeling in my pocket for my revolver, for I had made up my mind that I would have no half-measures with M. De Risque, I listened too, without speaking.
Two men in the corridor were talking just outside our compartment.
"It seems to have been a most determined assault on the place," said one of them. "The people inside the house were fortunately reinforced by an English officer, and they managed between them to drive the fellows off, although one or two of the servants were badly wounded, and they made several attempts to fire the house."
"But what on earth led to this demonstration against old Von Grahaun? The dear old chap is beloved by everybody. If there is anything wrong about him it is that he has too much sympathy with the common people."
"I think the police are satisfied there was no political reason for the murderous business. There was a lady there temporarily, so Fräulein Von Grahaun has informed them, who rather unwisely travelled with some very precious jewellery about her. She is supposed, indeed, to have in her possession a famous emerald, and she had been followed by this desperate gang of thieves, who thought they had an easy capture at this lonely house in the forest."
Flora then, despite her resentment at the way we had imposed upon her, had been loyal to us. The dear little girl had understood that for some special reason the Countess and myself desired her and the rest of the world to believe the men followed us for the purpose of stealing the Countess's jewellery, and she had given out this version of the affair. The news must have spread quickly and gathered point, I thought, although I don't know why I should suppose the German papers less anxious to get hold of an exciting story like this than the English papers would have been if some mansion up the Yorkshire moors had been carried by storm.
"Who was this absurd lady?" asked one of the gentlemen in the corridor.
"I don't know," replied his companion. "It seems Fräulein Von Grahaun very wisely refused to give any information on that point contending with a shrewdness that does the girl credit that if the name got out it would only mean that more scoundrels would get on her track. She left the house, it seems, very early in the morning, accompanied by the English officer, who undertook to see her to some safe keeping. I daresay he will be taking her to London."
If all girls were as sensible as Flora Von Grahaun, society would be almost worth living up to. So far the fates were on our side. I gently nudged the Countess, and, although she neither moved nor spoke, I could see she was considerably relieved by what she had heard.
Now that I was awake, I shook myself up and began to take an interest in the journey. I had slept myself into daylight, and it would not be a bad idea to have a look around the train, and see what sort of crowd our fellow-passengers were.
As I strolled along the corridor I saw they were just about the usual type of sleepy, early morning travellers, and there was nothing much of interest to be got here. It was tolerably safe to take the Countess to the breakfast car, and I was getting comfortably hungry myself. We were moving slowly along the corridor, past a series of reserved compartments, when the door of one of them suddenly opened. The Countess started back as a face appeared in the opening, and acting mechanically, curtseyed low, with as much grace as the narrow passage permitted. Instantly the door slammed, but not before I, too, had seen the face of the man and recognised it in spite of the prompt withdrawal.
Then both Emperors had come on to Berlin after all, Nicholas probably following or preceding his strong-willed relative. Surely he would have done better had he gone back by some route where he was least likely to meet people who knew him!
But for that matter, the big cities are, after all, the safest hiding-places, and the Czar is such an ordinary-looking person that no one who had not been brought so closely in contact with him as the Countess and myself would dream that this commonplace traveller in a sleeping compartment was an Emperor incognito.
Hurrying the Countess along the corridor to the dining car, I managed to get a seat in a corner, so that we had only to watch what was going on in front of us.
"You saw?" she muttered softly in English.
I merely nodded, and buried myself with a selection of food from the card.
"Yes, there are more people than ourselves anxious for a quiet journey," I said, as the waiter moved off.
I did not feel inclined to tell the Countess what I knew about her Royal master. I had thoroughly made up my mind that for her sake and for my own, and for the sake of some other consideration which I did not define, even to myself, our acquaintance, save for the ordinary formalities of society, must cease when I had seen the lady safe and sound among her own friends in St. Petersburg.
"This seat will do. Pardon, M'sieu!"
Two men sat opposite us. They had looked round the car for other seats but the place was full, and they had no option but to thrust themselves upon us. Their conversation at first was slow and trivial, and one of them casually asked me in Russian to pass the mustard. The Countess kicked my foot the instant the man spoke. I looked stupidly at him, and as he continued his interrogatory look towards me, I said in English. "Can I pass you anything, sir?" picking up each article near me and offering it to him, and, of course, selecting the mustard last of all.
Their conversation in an ordinary English railway carriage would have been harmless enough, but that the Countess was interested and agitated I could tell from the impatient tapping of her foot under the table. She had finished her breakfast of which she partook very little and had again completely pulled down her veil, which she had only raised an inch or two, and leaned back as she waited for me to finish. I gathered from her movements that she was not particularly anxious that I should hurry up, and I ministered with exceeding care and deliberation to the interests of my digestion.
"It is very good of you, I know; your warm heart beats for the troubles of your neighbours, and that your goodwill and gentle disposition will not permit you to be unkind even for those who oppose you. But the men who make history are the men of action."
The man who spoke was the person who had asked me to pass the mustard—a gentleman with stiff thick hair and a heavily- bearded chin. The other, a man of benevolent appearance and a voice which possessed the music of a good heart, replied quietly, "I agree that men of action make history. But men who act wisely make good history. Violence has never been a lasting good."
"But violence is sometimes necessary where other means fail. You cannot reason with a man who holds you by the throat. You must either cut off the hand or it will choke you."
"The analogy is not, I think, a fair one. We look beyond the men who, temporarily guide and direct the mind of one I need not name, and who see before us the glorious destiny of our country and our people."
"Inspiring words and thoughts, my dear friend, but thoughts and words are of little effect without deeds. How do you propose in this generation or the next to obtain that which you desire?"
"By peaceable methods. By convincing those whom we desire to convince of the justice and the moderation of our plea."
The other man shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.
The conversation had certainly warmed up since the two men began calmly discussing constitutional law and order. They got up and left us, still continuing their argument and with a quiet pressure of her hand on my arm the Countess motioned me to wait. The breakfast car was by this time becoming less popular, and the passengers, having satisfied their hunger, were moving back to their more comfortable seats for a second sleep or for a morning cigarette.
The Countess waited till the place was empty before she spoke.
"Fate! Fate!" she murmured. "What fate has brought us all together in this way?"
"All? Are there any more of us with a past?"
"Every person who has come to the years of maturity in Russia has a past."
"And a past that is likely to be reflected in the future, I suppose. Do you know our friends?"
"I know both by sight. I know one more closely. The quiet man with the zealous eye is Father Capon, an ex-priest and the champion of the people."
"Not a coadjutor of De Risque, surely?"
"No. The leader of a very different movement."
"So I gathered. But the older, apparently is of the De Risque type, and is doing his best to convert his companion. Is that why you fear him?"
The Countess paused a long while before she answered.
"He is not one of the Organisation of Combat."
"Then he is a physical force reformer of some sort, surely?"
"No, he is a man of noble birth and of high position in St. Petersburg. His name is Boutevski, a creature of Mirski's, a Prince whom I hope you do not know—and he is—" she dropped her voice, and putting her mouth close to my ear, whispered the words,—"an agent provocateur."
I turned away with an unutterable disgust that I made no means to conceal. I had read about these people and heard of them, and I could hardly believe that I had consented to sit opposite such a despicable creature without instinctively feeling that I was breathing a contaminated atmosphere. I am certain that had I known the gracious-bowing gentleman opposite me as one of those loathsome sneaks who prevail upon people to commit crime for the mere purpose of betraying them to the police, I should have dashed the contents of the mustard pot in his face for presuming to address himself to me.
Even now I felt creeping over me a desire to go in search of him and find some excuse for kicking him to relieve my feelings. However, when I began to remember that I was myself aiding and abetting, and protecting a beautiful spy, I philosophically decided that perhaps the best thing to do was to say nothing and get out of the business as quickly as possible. I was to discover, however, before long that a determination of this kind is easier made than put into effect when one has been drawn into the quagmire of political conspiracy.
We were now well over the frontier and on our way to St. Petersburg.
"Well, you have nothing to fear now, I think," I remarked to the Countess. "In a very short time you will be safe with your friends, and I should advise you not to venture away from them into other countries again. I think you have hardly chosen your true vocation in life."
"I am not the chooser of my ways. I do that which I am commanded."
"Then I can only say that those who command you—"
I stopped suddenly. It was no good hurting the poor girl's feelings, and possibly getting her into trouble by putting rebellious thoughts into her mind, so I simply added "For myself, I shall go back to England as speedily as my duty permits.'
"England! What a happy place to live in—England!"
Now we were beginning to get sentimental, and it was time we got back to our own compartment. Just as I was suggesting this, the train slowed down. I looked out of the window with some surprise. This was only a very small by-station, and we were not timed to stop at it. As we came to a standstill I noticed that men on horse-back surrounded the station and lined the level crossing as soon as the train had passed through the gate.
"The police!" said the Countess in a whisper. "They are going to search the train." She pulled on her gloves as she spoke.
In a very few moments uniformed officials were steadily marching from carriage to carriage and compartment to compartment. Nobody could possibly get past them, or even had any person slipped out along the rails there was the cordon round the station itself. Whoever the poor wretches were for whom the police were looking, their road to Siberia was now direct if they happened to be on this train.
"We had better make our way back to our proper seats. It will save argument," I said, leading the way for the Countess, who followed fumbling with her gloves in the passage.
As we passed the reserved carriages, the lady stopped opposite the one where we had seen the Emperor. With an anxious look of enquiry, she pointed to the door.
Both of us had realised the extraordinary position. It was quite obvious from what had happened earlier on that the occupant of this carriage was anxious most of all to avoid recognition by any persons associated with Russian official life, and I knew better than the Countess the reason why.
"He is supposed to be in the Winter Palace," she whispered.
"But one word whispered by him in the ear of the officer in charge will be sufficient, surely?"
"He dare not speak it."
I had got enough on my hands already in all conscience, but with the meddling Britisher's irrepressible desire to interfere in everybody else's business, I found myself devising plans which I should adopt if I were the Emperor. I could hear the police officers moving along the train and in short, sharp sentences demanding the passports of the passengers.
The door of the compartment opened very softly, and, as the white face became visible once more to the Countess, it was being pushed to smartly when, a sudden inspiration seizing me, I slipped my right foot in the opening. "How dare you, sir?" said a voice in tremulous indignation.
As for the Countess, she covered her face with her hands. Such an impious act was too terrible to gaze upon.
Regardless of the enormity of my offence, however, I pushed open the door and boldly stepped inside the apartment.
"For reasons best known to yourself, and perhaps not unknown to me," I said, "you desire to avoid recognition. You are the Hon. Hugh Gascoigne, in the service of His Most Gracious Majesty, Edward the Seventh, King of Great Britain and Ireland. Here are your credentials and passport."
He clutched the documents I pulled out of my pocket-book and thrust in his hand. Glancing at the Royal Arms, and running his eye mechanically over the portentous list of titles borne by the Foreign Secretary, he looked at me nervously and asked, "What will you do?"
"Oh, I shall blunder out of it somehow," I said, backing out of the door and shutting it before he had time to offer any further protest. It was not till we had got back to our seats, there to await calmly the onward march of the inspecting officer, that I began to understand in what an awkward predicament I had placed myself.
A smart young officer stood at the carriage door before I had formed any plan at all. The great object of all was, therefore, to gain time to think. There is nothing like the stupidity of the man who does not understand, and when the officer demanded my passport I wished him good-morning in a hail-follow-well-met English style.
"Your passport, sir?" he said again smartly in Russian.
"Yes. Yours is a very pretty country indeed," I said in English.
More sternly than ever he pointed to my pocket, and I promptly produced him my railway ticket.
Calling me a stupid person, and using other complimentary epithets which strongly tempted me to punch his head, he ordered me to come out. I stuck stolidly in my seat, and he twirled his moustache fiercely. A big assistant was about to get me by the shoulder, when an older officer coming into the compartment, enquired what was the matter.
"An obstinate person who will not produce his passport, sir," said the officer, saluting.
"Of what nationality?"
"English, I think, by his appearance, and his language is barbarous enough." The older officer, with a stupendous effort to remember a few English words, pointed to the passport which other passengers had exhibited, and asked:
"Your name, sir, and destination?"
"The Earl of Lanarkshire," I said promptly, using one of our family titles with pardonable disregard for accuracy of detail.
"Your passport, my lord?" he said, 'drawn,' as I expected, by the title.
"Oh, that paper," I said casually. "The thing they gave me at the Foreign Office. It's somewhere in my bag. I couldn't be bothered with it."
The two officers drew into the corridor and held a whispered conversation.
"He is evidently English and noble," I heard the older man say. "He has left his passport behind."
"Your orders, sir, were to detain anybody without exception who did not possess a passport."
The older officer stepped up to me again and, with a politeness of which I could not complain, suggested that I should wait until enquiries were made.
"My business is urgent," I said. "I have introductions and friends at the Embassy in St. Petersburg, and I must proceed with my journey." Whatever happened, I could not desert the Countess.
The two officers withdrew, and again consulted.
"We do not want more friction with the English Government just now," I heard the older one say, "and they are so dreadfully touchy about any of their subjects being molested."
The end of it was that I was lectured in broken English, with a mixture of Russian, on the necessity of carrying my passport on my person, and the officers passed on to worry other people. Once again the Englishman abroad had muddled through. As for the Countess, she had herself stopped the officers in the corridor, and as she held her papers up for inspection they passed her by in silence.
I heard a violent knocking at the closed door of the compartment where my passport really was, and then I heard the door slam again as the officers moved on. I knew exactly what had happened. My papers had been pushed through the door, and the mention of His Majesty's Service had been sufficient. The Emperor had been wise enough to keep his face out of sight behind a huge handkerchief and a violent fit of sneezing during the few moments that it took to examine my credentials.
The search went on, and I jumped to the window as I heard a commotion at the other end of the train. An inoffensive-looking peasant, white and protesting, was bundled out on to the platform, and the train proceeded. I could see by the faces of the officers that they were disappointed. They had caught nothing worth having, and had merely detained a wretched peasant in order that official dignity might not entirely suffer in the presence of the general public.
The Countess did not speak during the remainder of the journey. I quickly perceived that it was her desire not to be associated with this Englishman who had defied the police. As the train was nearing St. Petersburg, I wandered towards the sleeping compartment of the Emperor, but found no opportunity of speaking to him again. When the train drew up he stepped out, thoroughly concealed with huge fur wrappings, which were quite justified by the raw night, and, stepping into a closed carriage already drawn up at the end of the platform, drove smartly off without a scrap of luggage. I quickly got the Countess to a carriage, and drove off with her to the address she gave the driver.
"Well, we have had an eventful journey, Countess," I said, leaning back. "And the police have made a capture. I suppose he was not one of our friends of the other evening?"
The Countess shook her head. She was looking out of the window with a troubled and anxious look on her beautiful face.
"Mr. Gascoigne," she said, turning suddenly towards me, "I wish you were back in your beautiful England. There is trouble coming of which none of us can see the end. It was fate that brought us all together today."
"Well, fate seems to have stood by us fairly well."
"And you have baulked the police. No, not the police, but people who are greater than the police. If ever they should know- -"
"Know what? I merely bluffed them with a title to which my family has a just claim. My father doesn't want it. My eldest brother has another one, and as it happens to be going begging there is no harm in my making use of it. I've not baulked the police very badly, surely, by doing that?"
"No. But do you know the mission of the police on that train?"
"To arrest as many poor wretches as they could lay hands on, on some pretext or the other, I suppose."
"No. The police were but the agents of those who rule the man whose compartment you invaded. He has eluded them for some purpose of his own, and they were anxious to—"
"But you surely don't mean to say the Czar would have been arrested by his own police officers?"
"No: the Czar would not have been arrested. A person travelling without credentials would have been detained, and the Grand Dukes would have been communicated with. Whether the Emperor waited for them to come, or whether he revealed himself to his captors, his object in remaining unknown would have been thwarted, and the fact that he has been out of Russia without permission would have been revealed."
"But they did not detain me."
"There are special reasons for leaving an English lord alone just now. I am afraid my Royal master would hardly have carried off the imposture as well as you did."
"No. He was as flustered as a clod-hopper in a drawing-room when I handed him my—by Jove!"
"What is the matter?"
I leaned back and looked at the Countess in helpless alarm.
I had not got my credentials back, and the Czar had driven off with them in his pocket.
THE situation was awkward enough in all conscience.
Here was I, Hubert Gascoigne, attaché to the Embassy in Paris stranded without my passports or credentials in St. Petersburg in rebellious company. For I realised that the Countess was not exactly a person with whom a diplomat, concerned with the safe secret of his country's interest, should be mixed up. A woman's sex discounts a great deal. But though I have as much sense of chivalry as most men, I confess to a feeling of distrust and dislike for this woman, who made it her business in life to win herself into the confidence of others in order that she might betray them.
But as I drove in her company to the hotel it began to dawn upon me with unpleasant strength that, insomuch as she was the only person who could help me, I was for the moment in her power. At one time I had thought of going straight to the Embassy and making known the whole business. But when one is a younger son, and has more or less expensive tastes and a small income, one does not hurry to seek an official reprimand that will probably end in dooming one to some inferior position and inferior salary for the rest of one's life. I had to get back my papers from the Czar without courting the anger of the Diplomatic Service and the only person who could get then back for me was the Countess.
As the confidential agent of the Dowager Empress, I realised that she must be a force in the Palace, and that with little tact she could induce His Majesty to part with my passport and credentials without letting his little trip to the frontier become public property.
I thought it best to take her into my confidence, and as we drove over the snow I put the matter clearly before her.
"My dear Mr. Gascoigne, there will not be the slightest difficulty. I will promise you to see His Majesty tomorrow, and I have enough influence to protect you from the inquisitiveness of the police until the papers are once more in your hands. If you don't make yourself too public, and keep within the hotel all will be well. Tomorrow at eleven I can obtain an audience, and at dinner I will promise you to hand over the documents. But how came you to realise so suddenly that the Czar had special reason for secrecy? Had you seen him before?"
She looked up at me with eyes whose meaning it was not difficult to read, and if I had been so dense as to be unable to understand what was written there, the fact that she slipped her hand under the rug and warmly pressed my own would have settled any doubts in my mind.
"Remember, Mr. Gascoigne," she said, looking up at me, "I owe you my life. There need now be no secrets between us."
I tried to steel myself as well as I could to appear as friendly as possible. To speak the truth, the woman got on my nerves. I neither liked her nor her occupation. And yet I had to trust her. I had, indeed, for the sake of my own safety and reputation to pretend a certain reciprocal affection which I was far from feeling. Diplomacy is a good game when played with men, but with a woman you dislike, and in the more dangerous game of love, it is poor fun. But I did my best. I piled platitude upon platitude, and returned the pressure of her hand with a warmth that I am afraid did not deceive her.
When we arrived at the hotel I could see that she was regarded as a person of very considerable importance. In Russia the number of people who are willing to cringe to you is a fair test of your political or social importance. And here the whole staff turned out, bowing and cringing.
As we entered the hall, followed by porters carrying our baggage, a tall man, with strongly marked Tartar features rose from an ottoman and advanced towards the Countess with outstretched hand.
"My dear Countess, this is an unexpected pleasure. We thought that the sun had been banished from St. Petersburg for ever."
"The sun has its orbits, you know, Prince," replied the Countess, "and you can't expect it to shine on two sides of the world at a time."
"Ah, but I don't like the night," he said. And then he glanced at me with a note of interrogation in his eyes. The Countess hesitated, but the invitation was too pronounced.
"Ah, yes. Let me introduce you, Prince; Mr. Gascoigne—Prince Mirski."
"Are we to fight or to be friends, your nation and mine?" said the Prince, a sardonic smile playing at the corner, of his lips.
"Both of us, Prince, have too much sense to fight," I said, returning his handshake.
"Well, we shall see, Mr. Gascoigne. But you must confess that your Government made a deal of unnecessary fuss about a few fishermen."
I was about to reply with warmth to this thoroughly Russian point of view when the Countess interfered.
"No politics, Prince, please. We will meet at dinner, when I trust I may have the pleasure of the company of both of you gentlemen."
Then she bowed slightly to us and vanished up the grand staircase.
I didn't like the look of the Prince, and I felt by that sensitive telepathy of our feelings that the antagonism was mutual. I, however, took the Countess's advice not to return to politics, and ridding myself of the Prince as soon as possible, retired to my bedroom.
In half an hour we met again at dinner, the Countess in high spirits, and even the Prince, under the influence of champagne, which he drank as if it were water, became a reasonably pleasant companion. We talked of everything under the sun except politics. We tore the society of Paris to shreds, and criticised the latest American engagement of the Crown Prince of Prussia. Literature, art, the theatre, scandal of the four capitals were passed in review.
Both the Countess and the Prince seemed to know London, Paris, and Berlin equally as well as St. Petersburg, and they would pass from the latest play in the West End, an impossible opera, composed under imperial patronage in Berlin as if the two capitals were blended together, and they took their choice after dinner whether to drive down Piccadilly or a Strasse in Berlin.
I thought the evening was going to pass off very pleasantly when the Countess struck the first note of discord.
We had come to the dessert, and the conversation was beginning to flag, when the Countess remarked, with just the slightest turn of her eyes towards me.
"Oh, by the way, Prince. I have news to tell you. I have met her."
"Her? Which her? There are so many, my dear Countess."
"Ah, the only one. Fräulein Von Grahaun."
I was startled by the way the Countess spoke, and looking up quickly at the Prince, I could see just a shade of colour come into his cheeks and the somewhat steely glint of his eyes soften.
He looked eagerly across the table.
"Where did you see her? Is she in St. Petersburg? How is she?" he said, pouring out the questions breathlessly.
"In any company your eagerness is rather unmannerly," said the Countess, pretending petulance.
"Where is she? Where is she? Has she come to St. Petersburg?"
"Ask Mr. Gascoigne. He is deep in the secret of her movements."
The Prince turned to me quickly. "You know Fräulein Von Grahaun?"
Confound the fellow, I thought. What was she to him?
"I have that pleasure," I said coldly.
"And you know where she is?" he said.
"On the contrary," I replied, "I am entirely ignorant of her present whereabouts. The Countess seems to be much better- informed than I."
"Ah, but you know she is leaving Germany," said the Countess, "and she is coming to St. Petersburg. Don't believe him, Prince. I believe he has it in his mind to be your rival."
That strange flush came into the Prince's cheek again.
"You have known Fräulein Von Grahaun some time, Monsieur?" he said.
"I am a very old friend of hers and her family."
"I believe then, you know the relations that exist between the Fräulein and myself?"
"To be quite candid, Prince, I've never heard her mention your name."
"Ah, that is strange—very strange indeed—if you are, as you say, a very old friend of hers. For she and I are betrothed."
His face hardened and the high cheek bones stood out with unpleasant prominence. "What truth there was in what he said I didn't know, but I felt uncommonly angry. What right had this fellow to be engaged to Fräulein Von Grahaun, or even pretend that he was? With difficulty I soothed my irritation enough to reply.
"As you are so intimately connected with her, Prince, you must be much better informed of her movements than I who am merely an old playmate of her childhood."
The point told.
"I have been away. I've been travelling," he said hurriedly, "and am only just returned to St. Petersburg. The address which I gave her to write to me I never reached, so that her letters have gone astray. But she is coming to St. Petersburg."
He looked imploringly at the Countess and myself.
"Ah, well, my dear Prince, we won't keep you on tenterhooks any longer. Tomorrow morning the charming Fräulein arrives here. You won't be kept waiting long."
At first I had merely disliked the Prince; now I hated him. What right, I thought, had old Von Grahaun to make this betrothal without my knowledge? He knew well enough that there had been some tacit understanding between us. And Flora, why hadn't she told me? It was just like a woman: always anxious to have two strings to her bow. Of course, there was a certain amount of vanity mixed up with my feelings. I couldn't understand her preferring this half-civilised Asiatic to myself. It seemed ridiculous: I hated the man there and then. And in my heart there swelled up in inverse proportion a maddening love for Flora. I thought of her as I had seen her last in the lodge of the forest. How charming she had looked as she bade me coldly good-bye.
I wished all politics and conspiracies in the bottomless pit. Our elementary passions are a strange thing. They enable us to see in one moment how utterly important are wars, and patriotism, and national prejudice, and a hundred and one other things that make up the life of the human race. I forgot all about my passports, all about my duty at that moment in my anger and chagrin at hearing that Flora had betrothed herself to the Prince. I don't know how the rest of that dinner went by, but I understood sufficient of what took place to know that the Countess was enjoying a triumph. Now I understood her cynical sneer at Flora when we drove away the other morning.
As soon as reasonable I rose and, wishing my companions goodnight, hurried into a coat and hat and rushed out into the white-covered streets. The snow was falling with that uncanny silence which makes the winter in Russia a sort of mysterious ritual. I went up the broad streets and across the bridge into the workmen's quarters. Everywhere soldiers were on guard. Between the clumsily-built houses and the great gloomy factories I trudged, pouring out to the stars imprecations on the Prince and the Countess.
I don't know where I had got to, when coming to the corner of a street I ran heedlessly into a man. He was dressed as a common Russian workman. As we recoiled from each other, he raised his hand, hesitatingly to his cap with that servile attitude that is so irritating to Englishmen. He began to mutter something under his breath. I looked at his face for a second. It seemed strangely familiar to me. For a moment I puzzled my brains as to where I had seen it before. Then I sprang forward, with outstretched hand.
"Von Grahaun!" I exclaimed.
I HAVE met a school friend unexpectedly at the top of Mont Blanc. I have run across an Eton chum in a Bohemian cafe in the back streets of Montmartre. I have knocked against friends in the Rockies. And I once walked into my own father, whom I thought to be spending his Christmas in England, at Suez. These sort of unexpected meetings happen to everybody. But I don't think I was ever so surprised at a meeting as I was at coming across Von Grahaun in this back street of the workmen's quarter in St. Petersburg!
If I was surprised at meeting him, I was all the more surprised at the attitude he adopted towards me. Instead of taking my hand, he put his finger to his lips, raised his cap from his head, and trudged forward. As he passed me I heard him murmur in English the one word, "Follow."
I was so surprised that I stood still for some moments where I was, watching his retreating figure, and he must have gone some fifty yards before I started trudging after him, keeping pace with his steps.
What on earth, I wondered, was this old respectable German- Scotchman doing in St. Petersburg disguised in a workman's get- up? Eccentric I knew he was, or rather that he held views regarded with disapproval by everybody but a small minority, which is really what we mean by eccentric. For on his Scotch instinct for liberty was grafted that German scientific leaning towards Socialism. Often in the old days had we argued about the ideal State. Many an hour I had listened to him as he enlarged on the duty of the people to govern themselves, and the sovereignty of the masses. But I had always thought these opinions were just the idle views of a man who was an aristocrat by birth, and so wealthy that leisure enabled him to indulge in abstract dreams. And here, after all, he was apparently engaged in some mysterious occupation, the object of which I could not possibly guess at. And I had plenty of time to guess, for we followed for near on half an hour down all sorts of mysterious turnings and gloomy streets, and there rose to my nose some of the most evil-smelling odours which it has ever been my misfortune to run up against. At last, when I was beginning to wonder when this game of follow-my- leader was to end, he took a sudden turn down a peculiarly dark street. Which, though broad like all streets in St. Petersburg, was so ill-lighted that you could hardly see across. Here, fearful of losing him, I hurried my steps. Just as I passed a doorway I heard somebody whisper, "Stop,"', and I came to a standstill, In a doorway I saw Von Grahaun standing, beckoning me to follow him. He opened the door, and going up the steps I entered the house. It was quite dark in the passage, and as I stood there I was not daring to speak lest I should unconsciously do my old friend some harm.
I was greatly relieved when I heard him say in his ordinary voice, "You must think this a very strange meeting, Hubert."
"However mysterious I am very glad to have met you, Von Grahaun," I replied. "But can't we have a light?"
Just then he struck a match, and a little splutter of yellow light showed me him, standing there in his workman's costume against the wall with rather a weary look upon his face.
"Yes, if you'll follow me, I'll take you upstairs."
And then, without another word, he lit a candle that stood on a table in the hall, and began to mount the stairs that faced the doorway.
There was just sufficient light for me to see that the place was but poorly furnished. A deal chair unstained and a table roughly put together constituted the only furniture in the hall. The staircase was of stone, and uncarpeted, and on the walls the paper hung loose with the damp.
I followed up his steps, wondering what on earth this man who was reputed to be worth £50,000 or £60,000 a year, could be doing in a den like this. My surprise was all the greater when, on arriving at the first landing, he opened a door, and I found myself in a long room sumptuously furnished with all the luxury of the twentieth century. A cheerful fire burned in a wide open grate. My feet sank deep in the carpet heavily piled; on the walls hung pictures which proved the taste of the owner. All the furniture was oak, and beautifully upholstered in dark red. The incongruity of this room in a house that, judging by the ground floor, was little better than a Ratcliffe Highway dwelling, astonished me not a little. And the picture of Von Grahaun standing in these sumptuous surroundings, clad in his workman's clothes, increased the strangeness of the picture.
"Well, this beats everything!" I exclaimed, unable to repress my astonishment any longer.
"Yes, you would naturally think it strange," said Von Grahaun, in that same tired voice, putting his cap on a table and sinking into a large armchair.
"But what does it mean? Are you getting up any charades or are you simply studying life in the slums of St. Petersburg?"
He didn't answer my question, but lay back in his chair with his eyes half-closed, apparently tired out. He looked so old and so ill, that a great pity for this strange rich man came into my heart.
"Von Grahaun, what is the matter? Let me get you some brandy. You look tired out."
He roused himself at this.
"I was almost forgetting my duties as a host," he said, "but if you would pour me out some brandy, my boy, I should be greatly obliged," and he pointed towards where the tantalus stood on the table, flanked by glasses and syphons.
I mixed him a large brandy-and-soda, and gave it to him.
He sipped it slowly. As I watched him, anxiously and eagerly, I saw the colour come back into his cheeks.
"Ah, that's better," he said, looking up at me with a smile.
"You ought to be ashamed of yourself, wandering about like this," I said in a bantering tone. "A man of your age, too. I wonder what Flora would say to it?"
As I mentioned his daughter's name, the troubled look came back into his face. He repeated the name after me with a sort of lingering regret.
"Ah, she will be with me tomorrow."
"Yes, I know. And she will have a great deal to tell you," I replied mysteriously.
"What do you mean? Have you seen her?"
I narrated to him the whole story of what had taken place in the lodge in the forest, holding back only so much as would not involve me in any breach of the oath which I had taken to the Society of the Organisation of Combat.
To my amazement, when I had finished my story, which he had not interrupted by one single question or expression of surprise, he said, with ill-disguised anxiousness, "Who is this Countess Blaveski? What is she?"
"Well, Von Grahaun," I said slowly, trying to make my answer as non-committal as possible, "people don't inquire too closely into the calling followed by others in this strange city of St. Petersburg."
"Yes, but it is important that I should know. There are many things—" he paused confusedly—"many things which we cannot talk about, but are important, nevertheless. And with Flora's safety at stake..."
"Oh, you can set your mind at ease on that score. Flora is not concerned with the Countess in any way. They just met as ships that pass in the night, and they need not meet again," I added, thinking for the first time of Prince Mirski.
"You mean you will not tell me?" he said, raising his brows.
"Well, we are old friends, sir, and you can rest assured that if I thought Flora's safety was concerned I would assist you to the best of my ability. But you will understand that there are certain things which a man of honour cannot do, and one is to break his promise."
He rose from his chair, and, coming across to me, put his hand kindly upon my shoulder.
"Quite right, my boy. I understand. And you, you will understand the same thing."
I gathered what he meant. I was not to inquire into the why or wherefore of any of the strange things I had witnessed. That is to say, I was not to ask why the wealthy Von Grahaun chose to wander about the streets of St. Petersburg clad like a working- man, and why he lived in a house, the ground floor of which had all the attributes of a slum, while the upper floor was furnished with the sumptuousness of a palace.
I nodded my head. He went back to his chair and sat down.
There was silence for some moments, while I blew rings from a cigar to which I had helped myself from a box upon the table.
"What time does Flora arrive tomorrow?" I said, breaking the long silence.
"Ten o'clock."
"It will be nice for you to have her with you," I said, inconsequently.
Then, somehow or other, my mind, which had been distracted by the mystery which surrounded Von Grahaun for the last two or three hours, began to centre itself in Flora, and from Flora to Prince Mirski. The gnawing anger of that dinner-table conversation, and the tramp through the streets came back to me. I went over the whole scene again—the deliberate and obvious intention of the Countess to make mischief between the Prince and myself; the eagerness of the Prince when he heard that Flora was expected in St. Petersburg; the angry suspicion with which he seemed to regard me when I told him of my long and old friendship with Flora; the somewhat patronising manner with which he had informed me he was betrothed to Flora. I followed the whole scene out again in my mind. Who was this Prince Mirski? Where had he come from? Why had I never heard of him before, I, who had known the Von Grahauns for years?
Almost unconsciously, my lips formed the question aloud. "Who is Prince Mirski?"
I said the question more to my cigar smoke and to the space in which it floated than to Von Grahaun. But to whatever I addressed it, whether to space or Flora's father, the effect was electrical.
He sprang to his feet, his face white and drawn, and almost ran over to my side.
"Where did you hear that name? What do you know?" he said, his grasp on my arm tightening like a steel vice.
For once in a way all my coolness and calmness left me. The strength of the old man's excitement unnerved me for a moment.
"W-h-a-t do you mean?" I stuttered. "What do you know of Prince Mirski? Where did you meet him?"
I recovered my sense with an effort. "Countess Blaveski introduced me, only tonight."
"Why do you ask who is Prince Mirski then?"
He was now ashy pale, and I could feel his hand shaking as it gripped my arm.
"Because," I said slowly, looking at him, "because Prince Mirski told me to-night that he was betrothed to Flora."
"What if he is?" He let go my arm, and stood there looking at me, and I could see, for all the effort that he made to master himself, that he was shaking in every limb.
"Can you ask me that, Von Grahaun," I said, "after all these years?"
He knitted his brows as if trying to fix an unnatural calmness on his face. "I do ask you. Don't you understand? What concern is it of yours if Prince Mirski is betrothed to Flora?"
To ask for an explanation seemed to be not only unnecessary, but rather bad form, after the relationship which Von Grahaun must have known had existed between Flora and myself.
I found it hard to express what I had in my mind in reply.
"Well, I should have thought, sir," I said with some confusion, "that you would have understood. I don't know whether I should be an ideal son-in-law, but I had always hoped—"
He interrupted me. "You never asked Flora. You never came to me to ask her hand in marriage."
"Well, no," I retorted slowly, "I never did that because I thought to make for myself a name in the world, or, if not a name, a position, before asking your daughter to marry me. But I thought you understood," I ventured lamely.
"How was I to know?" he replied.
I could see that the question was an evasion. I could see, moreover, by his face, that he knew very well that what I had said was the truth, that he understood there was a tacit arrangement between Flora and myself extending over many years. There was something mysterious behind it all, something of which he was trying to avoid an explanation, an explanation to which I thought I was entitled. What did it all mean, I wondered. And with provoking inconsequence there sprang to my lips that same question:
"Who is Prince Mirski?"
"By what right do you ask that question?" he replied sadly, the colour coming into his cheeks.
"Because," I said, looking calmly into his eyes, "because I love your daughter, and she loves me."
As I said the words I felt that my youthful impudence was getting the better of me. What if Flora didn't love me? She had never told me that she loved me, though for certain I had every reason to suppose that my affection was reciprocated.
The old man did not answer, but looked at me like one in a dream, while the colour fled from his cheeks.
"Who is Prince Mirski?" I repeated again.
As if I had hit him, the old man staggered back into a chair and covered his ashen face with his hands. "Oh, my God! my God!" he moaned.
THE clock on the mantelpiece struck twelve. Von Grahaun raised a face so haggard and drawn that it seemed as if an incarnate sorrow had set a visible seal upon it.
"You must go now," he said, springing to his feet. "Some day you will understand. There is no time for explanation now."
I rose obediently and took my hat and stick, feeling deeply the agony I seemed to have caused my old friend.
"I am sorry," I began apologetically, but he stopped me, holding out a hand. "Go now," he said, "you are not to blame. You don't understand. Come tomorrow at eleven o'clock."
He turned to the door, opened it and with a lighted candle in his hand piloted me down the stairs. In another second I found myself stumbling blindly in the darkness of the street, my brain bemused and muddled up by the events of the last twenty-four hours.
It must have been well on to two o'clock before I again reached my hotel. The commissionaire eyed me askance and the hall porter looked me up and down with such exactness that I felt he was making an inventory of everything I wore, from my boot laces to my tie pin. I recollected that in Paris and most of the Continental towns, the concierge is a species of spy and I little liked the curiosity of these fellows.
I left instructions that I was to be called at nine, in order to keep my appointment with Von Grahaun at eleven.
The following morning I breakfasted by myself, scribbling a note to the Countess, urging her to use as much despatch as possible in recovering my papers from the Czar, and, assuring her that I hoped to have the pleasure of her company at dinner that evening, I jumped into a drozhki, and bade the man drive as fast as possible to a certain spot in the workmen's quarter, some ten minutes' walk from Von Grahaun's mysterious residence, which, I had carefully noted the night before as being a place where my appearance would not attract too much attention.
During the drive and the subsequent walk my mind busied itself with the pleasure of meeting Flora, for I knew that her train arrived somewhere about eight o'clock, and I supposed that Von Grahaun had asked me to come at eleven o'clock in order to meet her. If I had only been able to realise it I should have understood that Prince Mirski had done me a great service, for, while before I met him I thought of Flora more as a companion than as a woman whom I loved, now jealousy had fanned the flame of my affection. I realised that she was the only woman in all the world for whom my heart hungered.
Although I had carefully made a note of the road in which was Von Grahaun's house, I had no little difficulty in finding it, for the daylight gave the place a very different aspect from that which it wore in the indistinct shadowy atmosphere of the night. When I finally reached the door I knocked. But hardly had I knocked when the door swung open of its own accord, built, I suppose, on the usual cordon system.
Finding nobody to greet me, I entered the dirty, bare passage of the entrance hall, and shutting the door behind me, tramped up the stairs.
As I approached the first floor I could hear the buzz of many voices, which increased as I drew nearer the room in which I had first sat the night before with Von Grahaun. As I stood on the threshold with my hand raised to knock, I heard Flora's voice and a scrap of conversation.
"I tell you, gentlemen, I do this of my own free will. You don't understand a woman's heart. You forget that a Mary Stuart could love a Bothwell. And if—"
It was at this moment, not wishing to hear more of the conversation, which I guessed my ears were not intended for, I rapped lightly at the door. The buzz of conversation within immediately died down. I knocked again. There was no reply. So I put my hand upon the handle, turned it, and entered.
Except that more chairs had been added to the room, and the tables had been pushed back against the wall, the room was exactly the same as the night before. As I stood there on the threshold, with the handle of the half-open door in my hand, I felt myself the focus of some fifteen or sixteen pairs of eyes. Besides Von Grahaun and Flora, the company consisted of some thirteen or fourteen men, some well dressed, some respectably dressed, and others in the garments of the ordinary workman. I felt not a little awkward while this strangely mixed company looked at me with visible alarm. I felt that there was an atmosphere of suspicion in the room; that I was regarded not only with disfavour, but with distrust, and it was only with great difficulty that I preserved my composure sufficiently to walk across to Flora and hold out my hand.
She was standing by the fireplace, and as I approached a flush came into her face as she deliberately turned round and began to examine with considerable minuteness the ornaments on the mantelpiece. Her intention was so obvious that there was nothing for me to do but to hide my annoyance and turn my hand to Von Grahaun.
"You see I have kept my appointment, Von Grahaun," I said, with affected heartiness, seizing his very reluctant hand in my grasp.
The old man drew himself up to his full stature and eyed me coldly.
"I don't understand, Mr. Gascoigne. I have made no appointment with you. This interview—"
"No appointment!" I exclaimed, absolutely amazed. "Didn't you ask me last night to call here at eleven o'clock?"
"I said eleven o'clock to-night, not this morning. Your excuse is too palpable."
The rudeness of his speech and the more than coldness of my reception set me on my mettle. I determined at all costs to stay and ignore utterly all hints to be gone; to return the studied rudeness of my friend with a similar carefully studied density. I laughed lightly. "I wonder how I made such a foolish mistake? The main thing is that I am here, and very glad to see you looking so much better than you did last night."
Then I dropped into an armchair and, crossing my legs, assumed the attitude of one who has got ready for several hours pleasant chat.
Von Grahaun glared at me. Flora still concentrated her attention upon the ornaments on the mantelpiece. The rest of the company fidgetted uneasily in their chairs.
"You don't seem to understand," began Von Grahaun, "your presence here is an intrusion. I requested you call here at eleven o clock at night not at eleven o'clock in the morning. I hope you don't wish me to speak more plainly."
"We always agreed, Von Grahaun," I returned lightly, my determination to stay growing more stubborn every minute, "that the basis of Scotch humour was a mere bald statement of fanciful opinions. I see that the long residence of your family in Germany has not obliterated the national characteristic."
"Sir, you are impertinent," roared the old man, a very fury of rage reddening his eyes and attacking his brow. "I must ask you to leave this house immediately."
"Oh, you can't get rid of your invited guests as easily as that, Von Grahaun. Besides, my time is valuable, and I have something to tell you that will not wait."
"As you will have no opportunity to make a statement of any kind to me, Mr. Gascoigne," said the old man, sarcastically, "I must urgently request you not to waste here any more of the time which you assure me is so valuable."
"We are a determined family, Von Grahaun, as perhaps you know, and when I come here at eleven o'clock at your request, and come, moreover, with something most important to tell you, not even the rudeness of yourself and your daughter to me in the presence of entire strangers will prevent me from saying what I have to say," and I seated myself more firmly in my chair.
For a moment I thought there would be an outbreak. But the old man stifled his indignation with an effort and, turning to the company, said in a voice that shook with suppressed anger, "I am sorry, gentlemen, that this occurred. I leave you to judge the situation. As I have no desire to ask you to witness any longer a scene so unpleasant to my daughter and myself, we better suspend this meeting until the usual time tonight."
He walked over to the door and opened it. The company struggled to its feet, muttering to themselves in various languages and eyeing me uncommon sourly. They filed out of the room, but when the last had passed the threshold of the door, and I could hear the feet of the vanguard in the passage below, Von Grahaun followed them out, and I was left alone with Flora.
It was not an opportunity to be lost. I sprang to my feet and swept over to the side of the fireplace and touched Flora on the shoulder.
"Fräulein Von Grahaun, Flora, what does this mean? What have I done?"
Quickly she turned upon me, an angry flush in her cheeks and anger in her eyes. "How dare you, sir? How dare you come here after what has happened?"
I retained my attitude of calm.
"I don't understand," I said, shaking my head. "There are too many mysteries in this life for me. I am only a plain person, unused to calling on friends at midnight and being received as an old friend, and being received as an enemy some eleven hours later."
"This pretence carries no weight with me, I assure you, Mr. Gascoigne."
"I am not pretending. I'm very much in earnest," I assured her.
Then, with a sudden calmness, she turned the conversation, but there was still the angry glint in her eyes.
"What did you say to my father last night?"
I was at a loss for a moment. I remembered only too well what I had said, and the foolishness of the assertion sent the blood to my cheeks. So Von Grahaun had told her. "I love your daughter, and she loves me," those were my words, spoken without thought on the spur of the moment.
"You haven't answered my question," Flora continued.
There was nothing for it but a bold confession. "I said, I love your daughter, and she loves me. It was very foolish perhaps. The first part of it true enough; the latter warranted in part by what has passed between us."
With a truly feminine lack of logic she ignored my antithesis.
"I presume it is your custom to go about telling people that various girls have lost their hearts to you?"
"You are wilfully ignoring what I said," I replied angrily.
"Let me set your mind quite at rest," she retorted, frigidly, "I'm not in love with you, Mr. Hubert Gascoigne."
I felt very humble. "I am sorry, Flora, to have angered you, but I am so hopelessly in love with you that—"
I stopped, quite at a loss how to finish my sentence.
"You are very large-hearted," she replied, bitterly. "I am greatly honoured in being permitted to share that portion of your heart which is not allotted to the Countess Blaveski—and other ladies, for all I know or care."
"At least the Countess Blaveski compares favourably with Prince Mirski," I replied, feeling that the conversation was degenerating into nursery recriminations.
"What do you know of Prince Mirski?"
The question was so exactly alike that which her father had asked me the night before that I started.
"Except that I had the misfortune to be introduced to him last night, and that your father informed me that you are his betrothed, I know nothing of the man."
"Well," she craved, growing suddenly pale, "what business is it of yours? May not my father, with my consent, betroth me to whom he likes without asking the consent of Mr. Hubert Gascoigne?"
"No," I said boldly, "not as long as I love you, and you do not love Prince Mirski."
The anger came back into her face. "How dare you say that to me? Your presumption is only equalled by your conceit."
"I don't care," I said doggedly. "There is something at the back of this. Why does your father wander about the streets of St. Petersburg dressed as a working-man? Why is he so agitated when I mention the name of Prince Mirski? Why am I, one of your oldest friends, kept in complete ignorance of the fact that you are betrothed to this other person?"
She had no time to reply.
Just then Von Grahaun returned. He came up to me trembling with rage.
"Go!" he said, in a voice that shook with anger, "and never let me see you again. You've done mischief enough for one day. You have jeopardised the freedom of hundreds and nearly destroyed a cause. Go!" and he pointed to the door.
I took up my hat and stick and crossed the room. But at the opened door I turned, "Old age must have turned your brain, Von Grahaun, or, perhaps, fear. I am uncertain as to which of these is the cause, but of this I am certain, that your daughter shall never be sacrificed to Prince Mirski as long as I live. No, not to save those conspiring rapscallions who have just left this room."
The old man clutched his daughter for support as if I had struck him a blow. "Stop!" he said, "stop! What do you know?"
I had drawn a bow at a venture, and the bolt had luckily hit the mark.
"No, I am going now," I said, and turned on my heel.
As I began to descend the stairs I heard a choking sob, and Flora's voice exclaiming, "Father! father!"
But I steeled myself to keep on my way and passed out into the night.
FOR all my bold words I spent the rest of the daylight in a state of utter misery. My love for Flora had only been increased by her coldness and harshness. Though I had sworn that she should never marry Prince Mirski, I really saw no way by which I could prevent the match if she was in love with him and her father was bent upon the arrangement.
In spite of her words, I felt there must be something behind it all. Flora's remark that I had heard as I paused outside Von Grahaun's door came back to me. "I tell you, gentlemen, that I do this of my own free will. You don't understand a woman's heart."
As seven o'clock drew near I suddenly recollected the fact that besides being Hubert Gascoigne, a man in love with Flora, a woman, I was also attached to His Majesty's Embassy at Paris and engaged at that particular moment on business that had for its object the preservation of peace between two great Powers. I must settle my diplomatic business first. Love must come afterwards.
I dressed with impatience and descended to the dining-room, to find the Countess already seated. She seemed abnormally excited and greeted me with a warmth which I thought it wise to reciprocate. I was burning with anxiety to know if she had succeeded in getting my papers, and though I several times led the conversation in that direction, she ignored my object. At last, when we had come to the dessert, I put the question point blank.
"How impatient you are!" she exclaimed petulantly. "One might think you were specially anxious to get rid of me."
I assured her that such was not the case, but that my anxiety was quite natural, seeing that my diplomatic reputation was at stake.
"You might at least attempt to conceal your impatience in my company," she said.
I made some obvious retort, and again pressed her to let me know the result of her mission.
"We can't talk here." she said, "let us go out into the conservatory."
As we rose to go a waiter came forward, bowing, and led the way.
We selected a spot behind a palm tree carefully secluded from any neighbouring tables. I ordered coffee and liqueurs, and as we lit our cigarettes we relapsed into silence. I was waiting for the Countess to tell me what had happened. She, on her part, lay back in her chair, idly puffing at her cigarette and gazing at me with a sort of renewed regard.
"Well?" I said, when the silence had become irksome.
"Well, I have them."
"Where are they?" I said, leaning across the table. "Let me look at them. I don't feel safe till they are once more in my possession."
"My dear Mr. Gascoigne, like all your race, you are too impatient. I tell you I have them. For the present that is enough."
"I am eternally grateful to you, Countess, but you understand my anxiety to have them once more in my breast-pocket. One is not too safe in this city without those credentials."
She laughed, with a certain restraint in her voice.
"I have them," and she produced the papers from her breast. "But," she added, as I stretched forward eagerly to take them, "they can only be given to you at a price."
"I don't understand," I replied, alarmed in spite of myself.
"Ah, don't be in such a hurry. I will help you to understand. I have had much difficulty in getting these papers, and, as you say in your country, business is business. Well, before I give them to you I will recall to your memory certain facts which may perhaps interest you—or not. Anyway, I will tell you them."
She unfurled her fan and began fanning herself lazily.
"I have a very great friend, Mr. Gascoigne, to whom I am under a great debt of gratitude. You have met him. He is a man who has done much for me in the past and is prepared to do much for me in the future. You have already understood that mine is a dangerous occupation. Well, this friend I am bound to conciliate. You may ask me why, but that I cannot say. A capacity for silence and discretion are the only weapons with which I have to ply my employment. Let it suffice that I have to conciliate him. Well, he is in love with a certain girl. She, I fear, does not reciprocate his affection, having given her foolish little heart to somebody else. But still he loves her; and he desires, before all things to marry her. Now the somebody else to whom this girl has given her foolish little heart has met this friend of mine, and this friend of mine has been astute enough to discover that this somebody else is also very much in love with the girl. The somebody else is a determined person, prepared to go to any length to carry out his desire. My friend is frightened of him, and has come to me and said, 'You must make a bargain.' Do you understand me?"
I shook my head densely, though I understood well enough.
"It suits you to be dense, but if you are anxious that I should be quite frank—the friend is Prince Mirski, the girl Fräulein Von Grahaun, and the somebody else is yourself."
"Still, I am at a loss, Countess, to understand your meaning."
She closed her fan with a snap. "Don't let us fence like this, Mr. Gascoigne, it is so unnecessary. I will state the case in black and white. Prince Mirski has come to me and said, 'I am in love with Fräulein Von Grahaun, who is betrothed to me. I fear that Mr. Gascoigne, who is in love with Fräulein Von Grahaun, a love that I have reason to believe is reciprocated, means to force her to break her betrothal vow. In memory of past favours I ask you to bargain with Mr. Gascoigne. Manage it as you can, but he must promise to give away all thought of marrying Fräulein Von Grahaun.' Now Prince Mirski, Mr. Gascoigne, is a man that I cannot refuse. You understand; great interests are at stake. Angry though I was, I had to consent to the arrangement. And that is my bargain. Before I give you your papers you must swear to me to give up all thought of marrying Von Grahaun's daughter."
I hid my irritation and disgust as well as I could.
"Let me assure you, Countess, that you are quite mistaken: so is Prince Mirski. From Flora's lips to-day. I have heard that, so far from loving me, she has given her heart entirely to Prince Mirski."
"You have seen Flora to-day?" said the Countess, bending forward eagerly.
"Only six hours ago," I replied, "Flora told me that I was nothing to her and that she had given her heart to Prince Mirski."
The Countess leant back in her chair and began to laugh.
"No, no, Mr. Gascoigne, that won't do, I assure you."
"I give you my word of honour that what I state is absolutely correct."
"She may have said so. Mr. Gascoigne, but out of the woman's mouth the heart rarely speaketh."
"On my word of honour," I replied, "What she said left no possibility of doubt. Her father practically kicked me out of his house."
"Then you have been over to—let me see—what do you call the name of the street?" she said.
I was not to be caught like that. This political spy, whose business it was to send people to Siberia or to death, suddenly filled me with an utter loathing.
"Before one forgets, Countess, one must know."
She flushed up to the roots of her hair.
"Well, no matter," she said in confusion, "what Fräulein Von Grahaun told you, if she did tell it you, is not the case."
"I repeat it to you, my dear Countess," I said, growing cold in spite of my endeavours to keep my real feelings out of my voice, "the exact words she used. You meet my statement with a flat contradiction, in support of which you bring forward no proof."
"The proof is there, itself," said the Countess. "Could anybody love Prince Mirski?"
"Fräulein Von Grahaun does," I said stubbornly.
"Well, we are continuing this conversation to no purpose. These are Prince Mirski's terms, and I am only able to carry them out. You must swear to give up all thoughts of Fräulein Von Grahaun, or I can't give you back your papers."
At this all my self-control left me.
"I knew you were a spy, Countess, but up to this moment I had done you the credit of believing that you followed this business from compulsion, not from instinct."
At this moment a French looking waiter, with a pointed black beard, returned with the coffee and liqueurs and placed them on the table. We were silent until he had withdrawn. Then the Countess turned to me, with the lips of her mouth set hard.
"Whether you swear or not, you will never marry Fräulein Von Grahaun."
"And I think," I replied hotly, "that a certain Organisation in Paris would be very glad to know of your real name and of your whereabouts."
She turned a shade paler.
"But you have promised, and dare not break your word."
"I see no reason why I should keep faith with a spy," I replied.
She mastered herself with an effort.
"You are talking nonsense, my dear Mr. Gascoigne. Before two hours are over you will be under close arrest, and when that happens in Russia people disappear without any comment. As for Flora, and her old fool of a father, the authorities have held their hands long enough. It is time to strike."
"You will give me those papers." I said hotly, "or you will never—" I was going to say, "Leave this spot," when suddenly the waiter who had brought us our coffee stepped out from behind a palm tree with a sugar basin in his hand. He passed by the Countess's chair, and as he did so I thought he bent down and whispered something in her ear.
It was done in a moment, but the effect on the Countess was electrical: she looked up at the waiter with horror in her eyes, tried to speak, then gave one wild shriek, and fell back in her chair in a dead faint.
Before I could rouse myself the waiter had disappeared.
I did not trouble to go after him. Instead I went straight up to the Countess where she lay insensible, deliberately took the papers from her dress, glanced at them hurriedly, put them in my breast-pocket, and strolled with assumed nonchalance out of the conservatory.
MY triumph over the recovery of my papers buoyed me up for but a few minutes. With the discontent that is a part of man's nature, I had no sooner achieved one object than my thoughts wandered from that which I had gained to something which, to all present appearances, was lost.
The treachery and audacity of the unwomanly Countess, standing out in such vivid contrast to the sweet devotion and girlish dignity of Flora Von Grahaun only served to remind me of the precious prize I had that morning set out to win at all costs.
I could not rest in the hotel, I must have air to breathe and room to think. With no definite purpose I rushed out into the street and walked and walked wherever my feet took me. And my inmost desires must have guided my steps for I was hardly conscious of the direction in which I was going till I found myself in the unsavoury quarter of the city towards which Von Grahaun had led me the previous day.
In the better quarters of the town I had noticed a look of anxious care on the faces of the people who passed me. A company of infantry marching by to relieve the guard at one of the public buildings swung along with that dull, monotonous tramp of leaden- hearted soldiers, which the practised ear so promptly distinguishes from the springy step of fresh, high-spirited men just changing from rest to duty.
In the poorer quarters the moujiks passed and re-passed each other with a sullen, sombre air of dissatisfaction and disgust, without sympathy.
As I passed a little knot of them at a street comer I overheard a scrap of conversation that enlightened me somewhat on events of which—in my official position I ought to have kept myself informed. News had come from the Far East of a bad reverse. The Japs were driving the Russian soldiers back from the railway, their lines of communication were being gradually cut off, and a deep, disquieting conviction, was settling itself in the minds of the people that their cause was hopeless.
Such officials as I saw were angry, and apparently determined to find some harmless victims upon to whom to wreak their vengeance and relieve their feelings. They hustled the loiterers rudely, and made themselves unusually officious from a sheer desire to keep themselves busy, and to distract their thoughts from the humiliation of their military colleagues on the field of battle.
The people, on the other hand, bemoaned the loss of their friends and relatives—the young men who had gone forth, in the pride and strength of youth—and they visited the misfortunes of their country on the heads of the men in authority.
In a moralising mood I hung about the streets, contrasting the scene here with what I had witnessed in my own country in times of national anxiety. With us a temporary disaster had been accepted as part of the fortune of war. I happened to be in one of the poorer quarters of London when the news came from Magersfontein, and I well remember how the workman, as he shared the tobacco with his mate in a soothing pipe, remarked, with a hard look of determination, "We shall have to put this right, mate."
Yes with us there was a "we" in everything. It was "our" affair, and the dock labourer, as he smoothed out a crumpled paper with his dirty hands in the dinner hour, made it his own particular business to consider how best the situation might be met.
Here there was no "we" The responsibility, the duty, the glory, or the disgrace rested with some far-off and mysterious "they." The people regarded themselves as the mere children of an all-powerful Father, with whom the whole secret and work of national life rested.
I used to smile at the ex-corporal of Volunteers who criticised military tactics for the edification and to the delight of his shop mates. But I longed to find his counterpart here in this great city of human machines. Never till now had I realised what a fibre of personal responsibility runs through the nation that governs itself. At home I regarded ordinary everyday politics with the superior air of the diplomat, and when I heard my immediate friends and relatives discussing their respective chances of winning a seat in the House of Commons, I shrugged my shoulders and remarked with indifference that I supposed somebody must do these things. Out here I was becoming a positive demagogue. If I allowed my thoughts to flow much longer in this channel I should be jumping on the nearest doorstep and addressing the assembled multitude on the glories of free British institutions.
Possibly my revolutionary tendencies were displaying themselves in my manner and looks, or perhaps I was moving about too much with the air of a man who had no direct business in the streets. A huge police officer cannoned against me, and I was just about to hit him, but fortunately I remembered in time that I was myself a representative of law and order. When he commanded me roughly to get about my business, therefore, I moved smartly on, but began to ask myself, without receiving any satisfactory reply, what was my business. It was clearly not the time to involve myself in any more secret meetings, or to aid and abet suspicious gatherings, such as that upon which I had lighted that morning in Von Grahaun's slum dwelling.
Knowing the theological enthusiasm which the old gentleman had inherited from his Scottish ancestors I tried at first to assure myself that, after all it was possibly only some new religious cult, with a harmless sort of creed—a kind of Continental slum settlement Calvinism, similar to the movement through which some members of my own family condoned the frailties of their West End life by occasional missions in the East End of London.
But it was impossible to deceive myself. The consternation, and, indeed the blank despair of Flora and her father when they first suspected that I had discovered their secret were too painfully obvious. It was no international counterpart of the Church Army that Von Grahaun led, and it was no mere religious enthusiasm that prompted Flora to sacrifice herself to that monster Mirski.
And yet what if it were a political conspiracy? It would be, it must be a movement for doing good. Flora, my gentle, good- hearted, high-minded Flora could do nothing wrong. Any movement to which she gave assent must be guided by the purest motives.
Political conspiracies! Who would not be a political conspirator in a land like this? I would go to Flora, and tell her that I was wrong and cruel in mocking her father and making sport of his "rapscallions." I was sure they were good men, and true, or they would not be tolerated in her presence.
It will thus be seen that I was rapidly becoming a convert to political principles which I neither understood nor believed, and an old Parliamentary hand, to whom I have related my experiences, assures me that there is nothing new in this—especially when a woman is concerned.
Moved on by the police, I wandered towards that mysterious self-acting door, and stood hesitatingly in front of it. To go inside unbidden was to court further insult from a man whose grey hairs protected him. But for Flora I was prepared to suffer anything. Personal dignity, social ambitions, diplomatic distinction, respect of my fellows, the confidence of my superiors, ambition, duty, the prospect of promotion, were all obliterated and obscured by one delicious vision; and that vision the sunlit, innocent face of Flora.
I raised my hand. My knuckles were almost on the door, when by a sudden instinct that came to me, I suppose, with my new-born zeal for political conspiracy, I first looked round to see who was about, and noticed with some alarm that the police officer who had hustled me in the other street had followed me throughout my meandering. He was talking to a man in ordinary civilian dress; and although they professed to be taking little notice of me I determined not to go into the house. They were obviously not sure of me and the fact that I had entered this dwelling might induce them to follow me. And Von Grahaun, with the police in his house, might have a difficulty in explaining his own position. With a sudden sweep of my arm I dived my fingers into the breast- pocket of my overcoat and pulled out my cigar case. Going a little closer to the door I struck a match, and puffed away as though I had merely stopped to get a lee corner to light my match.
I think the movement satisfied my watcher, but it did not coax them off my track. The man in civilian clothes parted company with the uniformed officer as soon as I moved on, and, turning a corner abruptly, I waited in the shadow of a doorway. He walked up to the corner and I saw him stand there a few minutes peering irresolutely along the street, obviously looking for me.
As he walked past where I was standing I pulled my heavy overcoat well up round my ears and buried my face in the big fur collar. Squeezing myself back against the door as closely as I could, I allowed him to pass, and just as he had got about a dozen paces away from me I felt the door yielding under the pressure of my shoulders.
This was surely a hospitable sort of neighbourhood, where the doors opened as soon as you touched them, but it was a case of any port in a storm for me at this moment. I had no desire to come in contact with the Russian police, even although I was not at all frightened by the Countess's angry threat about my arrest and subsequent disappearance. In the Diplomatic Service one is expected to live decorously and according to the usages of society in the capital to which one is attached, and it was no part of the custom of the Russian aristocracy to roam about the slums of the city, engaging in street brawls with the officers of the law.
Stepping lightly inside the door as it swung open, I closed it gently, and found myself standing in a dark passage, similar to that through which Von Grahaun had conducted me the night before. Listening intently through the crevices at the side of the door, I heard the plain-clothes-man tramp hastily backwards and forwards, and then, in a moment or two, he was joined by the two other men. I knew perfectly well what was happening. My sudden disappearance had confirmed their suspicions, and they intended to find out what this well-dressed man of foreign, appearance was doing in this quarter of the city. There would be a man posted at each end of the street, and possibly one or two others parading up and down, for the next half-hour at any rate. I must make up my mind, therefore, to keep snug in the hole to which I had bolted, hoping and trusting that it might not prove a trap.
The darkness of the place oppressed me. If I could only find a seat and get a smoke I could manage to tire out the gentlemen who were keeping vigil outside. It was very late, and possibly the good folks of the house in which I had taken refuge had gone to bed, though why on earth they should leave their door on the jar I could not conceive.
My meditations were suddenly interrupted by a smart tap from the outside.
"Now for it," I murmured to myself. The police had evidently made up their minds to search the whole street. It was very flattering to me, but at the same time it was most inconvenient.
The door swung open as before, but just before it did so I heard the vibration of a wire, running down from the room above. The door, then, was not on the jar at all, but simply opened from within at a signal. It was not the pressure of my shoulders, but a chance tap of my heel that had set its hinges going for my benefit. This was all very interesting, but it did not reconcile me to the prospect of spending the night in long argument with Russian officials.
However the thing had to be faced, and I was stepping out of the gloom, intending to ask the intruders what they wanted with me, when a "Whisht," which, if I know anything about dialect at all, was acquired in the south-west of Ireland, drove me back from the open door. The newcomer closed it very gingerly, waited a few moments with his ear glued to the part that did duty for a latch, where there was a narrow opening, and then, with a self- satisfied "That's all right," turned towards where I was standing, and spoke in Russian.
"There appears to be something stirring outside. Two or three strange people are hanging about, but—" And then suddenly breaking into delightful Irish, "Who are you, anyway? And phwat the divil are you loitering in the passage for?"
There was a clarion note of deliverance in these impetuous words. Now I knew that I should muddle through somehow. The Irishman might be an Orangeman or a Fenian, and in the British Isles we might be arguing and fighting over our respective little islands, their virtues and vices, but here in a strange country, when one of us was in trouble, the other would stand by him to the finish.
He paused little for an answer, and then suddenly remembering that he had addressed me in his mother tongue, he repeated the question in Russian and in a little less spicy form.
"Shure and I'm waiting here like the stars that shone above sweet Molly Bawn—because I've nothing else to do!" I retorted, calling to mind the old Irish ballad which a cousin of mine used to sing at smoking concerts with the tenants on my Irish uncle's estate.
The man fumbled in the dark till he got my hand and then wrung it with a grip that made the bones of my fingers crack.
"Come upstairs, my boy!" he said. "Whoever you are, if you can sing 'Molly Bawn' that's good enough for me. Are you one of the members of the English Society?" he added, glancing over his shoulder towards me as we turned a corner of the staircase that led us into a dimly-lighted passage.
Society! Good heavens! Had I stumbled upon another secret gathering of some sort? Was every corner of the globe inhabited by conspirators? Was there a place on God's earth where I could walk without running my nose into other people's business?
Something in my manner must have roused his suspicion, for he suddenly halted and remarked, "Wait here a minute."
I turned down the collar of my coat, and, throwing it open, exposed my face for the first time.
"Holy saints! Hubert Gascoigne!" We were both by this time standing under a badly-trimmed paraffin-lamp, but I easily recognised the handsome, clean-cut Irish features of Antony Fitzgerald. I had lost sight of him for a year or two, but we had almost everything in common; I was the youngest son of an English peer, he was the youngest son of an Irish peer. Our two fathers had married two sisters. We were of the same age, and the brightest days of my boyhood were those which I spent with him on his father's estate in the south-west of Ireland, where, his genial good-nature breaking down all social barriers, he lived as much in the cottages of the peasantry as in the home of his father.
We looked at each other in mutual astonishment. There was so much to explain, that each waited for the other to speak first, and before either of us could begin, a door on the left opened and a yellow-faced person, with a huge beard and gold-rimmed spectacles invited us in.
Antony looked at me and looked at his friend. And then with a jerk of his head, just as in the old days he used to signal the inception of a new piece of mischief, he introduced us, and hustled me into a room where a gathering of persons, almost identical in appearance and general style to those I had seen in Von Grahaun's house, were seated round a table.
Pulling him aside for a moment, I whispered swiftly in his ear, "Fair play, Antony. I am in the Diplomatic Service, and it is necessary that I should earn my living. I don't want to be mixed up with any harum-scarum devilment of yours."
A glint of disdain came into his glorious black eyes as I uttered the words, "Diplomatic Service," but in a softened tone he said:
"I despise the Saxon official, but begorrah I love the man, and I'll not let you down," he said. And stepping forward to the table he explained that he had unexpectedly met a friend and was anxious to have a few minutes' private conversation with him.
Before he had done speaking, the electric wire vibrated, and one of the company gave the signal to open the door. Almost immediately afterwards a frightened man burst into the room.
"The police are watching the house," he said, "and, from what I overheard, they are contemplating a search."
"Faith, Hubert, my boy, I much fear you're in trouble after all. But I don't think it's serious. You will simply have the excitement of seeing this little band broken up."
"You are all wrong," I said. "They don't want you at all. They're after me. And, as I came in here unbidden, I'll walk out of my own free will."
"And get nabbed like a rabbit bolting from a ferret. No, I'll be shot if you do. We're tumbled up against one another and we're going to stand by one another. Leastways, I'm going to stand by you."
"But what of your friends? Now, don't be a fool, Antony. I'm all right. I have the British Government behind me. You look after yourself and let me shift as best I can."
"I don't like it a little bit. Faith, no, bedad I won't have it at any price. I'll see no man walk into the arms of the police before my very eyes without making a fight for it."
"I tell you, Antony, it's all right! I have absolutely nothing to fear but a short argument and an explanation if I walk out openly. But if I am found here—"
"Bedad, that's true. Our company is not likely to be an ideal certificate of character for you," replied my cousin, running his fingers through his raven locks in perplexity.
At that moment there was a loud rat-tat and a crash. The police had not taken the trouble to wait till the door was opened to them. They had simply barged through it and were now on their way upstairs.
THERE were not a great many of them, but the heavily-booted officers as they mounted the stairs made sufficient noise to impress my newly-discovered friends. I rather expected knives and pistols to come out, but I saw at once there was something very different to the Organisation of Combat about these people. They were mostly scientific-looking persons with broad foreheads and a certain gentle benevolence that one associates rather with a sub- committee of the British Association than a revolutionary plot.
Antony was the only man among them who looked anything like a fighter, indeed he was the only man who seemed to have his wits about him in the sudden emergency.
Bundling his companions one by one through a side door, he promptly cleared the room of everybody but our two selves. And then, settling down in a chair, and throwing one leg on to a table, he calmly filled his pipe as the foremost police official marched into the room.
"The top of the morning to you, or to be more precise, the balmy breath or the evening," he said, quietly lighting his pipe, and waiting for the intruder to explain his presence.
The officer took no notice of him, but walking to where I stood, still with my overcoat on, he asked abruptly:
"Your name and business in St. Petersburg?"
Secure in the possession of my passport and credentials as a member of the British Embassy, I determined with British foolhardiness to take a rise out of this officious person for his insolence.
"I wish to know first by what right you demand my name and what my business has to do with you?"
The man was in plain clothes, and this question of mine was therefore justified, but I suppose I was hardy justified in again refusing to enlighten him when he informed me that he was an official of the St. Petersburg Police.
"If you want to know my name," I said, "you can obtain it in a proper way, and I am quite prepared to explain my business to anybody who comes to one in a respectful manner. But by what rights do you break into the lodgings of my friend and relative in this outrageous fashion?"
One or two men in uniform closed up behind the detective, who was for a moment, uncertain how to proceed. This barefaced daring was a novel experience for a man whose duty lay principally with the poorer criminals of the city. He was accustomed to see blanched faces and to hear trembling responses when he addressed his clients.
"What objection can you have, to giving me your name?" he said with some little show of hesitation.
"The same objection as I have to handing a burglar my watch, because I do not recognise your right to it," I replied.
An idea had suddenly struck me that as I had bluffed the police once before so I might come out of this difficulty without giving my real name, which was the one thing I most desired.
Antony, sitting at the table puffing vigorously at his pipe, hardly knew what to make of the situation. He would have helped me out, of course, if he could only have seen exactly where I stood, but he had sufficient discretion, in spite of his hot Celtic blood, not to interfere until he had a better idea of what I was driving at. The police still took no notice of him, and his silence was, therefore, all the more creditable to him. For an Irishman to be absolutely ignored in a row was almost an outrage on human nature.
"Well, gentlemen," I said, taking out a cigar and quietly lighting it, "I am afraid I am detaining you from your duties. Do you not think you will be better serving your country on your beats than in this uninteresting room? It is not a pleasant night outside, but since you have undertaken the duty of guarding the streets I would advise you to go back to the streets."
The uniformed men looked at the person who was at their head, for instructions. Such audacity they had never met in all their lives, and my unparalleled coolness so astonished the head official that he simply looked at me in amazement.
"Gad, that's fine!" blurted out Antony, unable to control his mirth. "Man, I've never seen you on your perch so beautifully before. Keep it up."
The officers for the first time turned their attention to my cousin and, with a view of gaining time to think, began to cross- examine him.
Needless to say they got very little change here. Instead of replying to their questions, Antony swore at them so volubly in broad Irish that the humour of the situation sent me into roars of laughter. He gave the leader of the party such a vivid account of his probable parentage and the physical peculiarities of his possible ancestors, that if the good man had only understood half of what was being said he must have wondered whether nature intended him to be in the Russian Police or in a cage at the Zoological Gardens.
He finished up by jocularly inviting the officer to have a drink, and produced from somewhere a bottle of Irish whisky which, by the smell of it, must have been several points over proof, that he had smuggled into the country somehow.
Meantime, I had taken a seat at the table, and ignoring the police entirely, began a general sort of conversation with Tony in English.
The aroma from the strange spirit brought grimaces to the stolid Russian countenances of our visitors, and our studied unconcern so maddened the leader of the party that he was evidently determined to bring matters smartly to an issue.
"Once more I ask your name and business?" he said, crossing over to me and speaking in a loud, peremptory voice.
"And I once more tell you that I decline to recognise your right to ask me," I replied, taking a big pull at my cigar and half filling the room with smoke.
"Then, sir, I shall be compelled—"
"To interfere with a free born British subject?" I said, doing the John Bull in my best style.
"Grand! Simply grand, Hubert," said Tony. "Man, you ought to be ministering to the patriotic sentiments of your great and glorious Empire on the boards of modern music hall. So you should."
The officer, like his colleagues at the railway station, was impressed with the serious nature of the risk he was running. He was still hesitating and stroking his beard, when Tony suddenly ejaculated "Begorrah, Bertie, my boy, you'll have to speak now."
His eye had caught a brilliantly dressed man who just then appeared in the doorway. One of the men had evidently slipped out and fetched in a superior official, and the plain-clothes man was only too glad to hand over responsibility to him.
Realising the altered circumstances, I still tried to bluff it by expostulating with the new arrival, on the insolence of his subordinates.
He heard me patiently, and with perfect politeness said "Before I discuss that matter with you, sir, I am at least entitled to know whom I have the honour of addressing?"
He had me there. I could not possibly resist an appeal made in this form, and I replied, with as much dignity as I could command, "I am attached to the British Embassy in Paris, and am in St. Petersburg on business connected with my department. My name is Hubert Gascoigne, and my cousin, the Hon. Antony Fitzgerald, son of the Earl of Tipperary, has taken temporary lodging in this place, where I have been paying him a visit. I trust now, sir, that I may be permitted to go to my hotel in peace, as the intervention of your people has completely disturbed the pleasant evening which my cousin and I had arranged together."
The officer bowed gracefully.
"It will certainly be our desire to afford you all the courtesy and assistance in our power, and, as matter of form, may I have the pleasure of seeing you passport?"
"And my credentials also," I replied in the fullness of my heart.
The urbanity and respect of this gentleman was in such striking contrast to the treatment of his subordinate that my heart warmed towards him.
I had not looked at the papers since I took them from the Countess, and I passed them to him unopened.
He walked over to the light of the lamp, perused them carefully, folded them up neatly, and handed them back to me with another bow.
"You are in a rather unusual quarter of the town for English visitors," he said, still speaking with studied politeness. "May I have the honour of escorting you safely to your hotel?"
'"Go!—and ask me to come with you," whispered Tony, in English.
"I should be grateful to you," I replied. "The district, as you say, is unknown to me, and late at night one does not like to be wandering about strange streets. You'll come along and smoke a pipe with me before I turn in, Tony," I said, turning to my cousin.
"Yes; I shall be glad, if these gentlemen will wait a moment till I lock up my lodgings," said Antony gaily. "By the way," he added; "would you like to see my passport?"
He put his hand in his breast-pocket and pulled out a bundle of papers, but the official, with a smile, waved them aside.
Tony went into the inner room as though he had merely gone to brush his hair, and, coming back, carefully put out the light, waited till all the rest of us had filed out and then locked the door.
With the high official we made our way through several back streets and drove in a drozhki to the hotel. Of course I could not do less than ask the gentleman in, and he as readily accepted my invitation.
As we passed the concierge, the officer halted a moment and whispered a few hurried words to him.
"Sending a message relieving him of duty," whispered Tony, talking in English. "The old boy knows when he has found good company. We'll not get rid of him this side of morning."
I was not particularly annoyed at this. I wanted company, and although I was bursting for a long chat about old times with Tony, the presence of a third party perhaps would keep us both from moralising. I wanted life and chatter, not serious talk tonight.
We found a cosy corner in the smoke-room. The other people had all gone to bed; and after I had seen my two guests duly supplied with refreshments I went up to my room to put things straight as to my duties. I did not remember any early engagements, but I thought it best to look up my diary.
I had just pushed it back in one of my bags with a contented sigh as I found there was nothing on it for tomorrow, when a light tap at my door was followed by the appearance of the concierge with the information that a gentleman wished to see me downstairs.
I walked through the central hall, following the man up to the steps of the hotel, where a drozhki was drawn up with the door open.
"Who wants to see me?" I asked, looking from one to the other of the two men. And with that they both seized me, and before I could either struggle or cry out I was lifted bodily into the drozhki and drove off at a gallop.
We were not long in arriving at big building, which I easily recognised as an office of the Secret Police.
"What is the meaning of this outrage?" I asked, as soon as I found myself in a carpeted room where an officer sat writing at a desk.
The man looked up and I recognised him in an instant. It was the officer whom I had bluffed at the railway siding on the journey to St. Petersburg.
He made no sign that he recognised me, but rising from his seat he asked, in the same polite tones as his colleague, for my passport.
"But why am I brought here in this unwarrantable fashion?" I said, indignantly.
"Before I answer any questions I must ask whom I have the honour of addressing?" he said, repeating the promise of his colleague and holding out his hand for the papers.
I handed them to him unopened, just as they had been returned to me half an hour before.
He spread them out before him, and a grim smile overspread his face as he perused them.
"They are hardly the same as they were when I last saw them, Mr. Gascoigne," he said smoothly. "And they were not in the possession of the same person if I remember aright."
How much did he remember? I wondered. I was not long left in doubt.
"Shall we speak in Russian or in English?" he said. "I congratulate you, sir, on the speed with which you have acquired our language."
"Oh, that is nothing," I said, trying to put a bold face upon the matter.
"I found you could speak English the last time we met, and as an Englishman I never like to talk another language if I can avoid it—I presumed upon your mastery of our tongue."
"Complimented. I am sure," he replied, bowing frigidly. "But the Earl of Lanarkshire—"
He waited with a cynical smile on his face. He thought he had me. But, as a matter of fact, I believed I had him.
"The _Almanac de Gotha_, if you have one to hand, will show you, I think, that I am as much entitled to that designation as to the one you see there written. Gascoigne, I may inform yon, is my family name, and the Earldoms of Lanarkshire is one of our courtesy titles."
My own special claim to the title was not open to the very strictest investigation in British Heraldry, I knew, but it was sufficiently accurate to confuse a foreigner. The Police Director accepted it for the moment, and turned again to my papers.
"At all events," I said, pointing to these, "you have there my credentials, and if you have anything further to say to me I shall be pleased to see you at the Embassy tomorrow morning. Meantime, I have friends at my hotel who will be awaiting me."
"Yes," said the man drily, "friends who have eyes in their heads."
As he said this he walked over to the light and read the papers, holding them just as the other official had done in Tony's room.
"I believe," he added, in that smooth satirical voice which was beginning to get on my nerves, "the credentials of Hubert Gascoigne. Esq. have been handed to me for inspection by some other person once before. Do you know anything of that incident?"
"Those are my papers," I replied boldly, "and if any other person has shown you papers in my name they are probably forgeries."
I was priding myself on the diplomacy of this answer, when the Director quietly shifted the small movable light over to the corner of the desk nearest me.
"I think," he said, "you are correct in one respect. There are forgeries in existence, and I have them at this moment in my hand. Kindly look at that."
As he said he held first the thin passport over the lamp, and with a feeling of utter horror I saw that instead of the well- known English watermark at the top, the paper, on which this facsimile of my passport was printed, bore the trademark of a Russian firm.
The official struck a small gong twice, two uniformed men came into the room, and at a signal from my inquisitor I was led off between them.
As we walked along a narrow passage with iron-bound cells on either side, the words of the Countess came back to me.
"Before two hours are over you will be under close arrest. And when that happens in Russia, people disappear without any comment."
THE more I pondered over the threat of Countess Blaveski, the more hideous did my suspicion become. Here was I in the cell of a Russian prison, cut off from the rest of the world, under the control of a man whom I had befooled and who held documents presented by me which were obvious forgeries.
Nobody had seen me arrested except the hotel concierge, and he was undoubtedly an agent of the police. There would be no inquiries for me at the Embassy, because I was not due there. I tried to sleep, but the hard comfort of the cell was grating and repugnant. Look at it whichever way I would, I was in about the tightest corner I had ever known in my life.
In the early hours of the morning I heard the officials moving about, and I knew that my fellow-prisoners were being rudely disturbed from such slumbers as they had been able to enjoy. I waited impatiently for my turn; anything was better than this intolerable suspense. But nobody seemed in any particular hurry to bother with me.
I waited and waited, and fumed and fretted, until the morning had well advanced, when a big bearded brute of a jailer opened the cell door and, with a grunt, motioned me to come out.
I was taken along the passage to the room where I had been examined the night before. The same suave and cynical official was sitting at his table, and, motioning the jailer to leave us, he pointed to a chair. I was not to be treated as a felon just yet, which was something of a consolation. Although, had I known more of the ways of the Russian police, I should probably have regarded this as no very great cause for thankfulness.
"I am afraid the hospitality of our temporary home here is not quite equal to that of your hotel, my lord," said the officer in a quiet mocking tone that strongly tempted me to pitch the furniture at him.
"The hospitality does not matter much," I replied, with as much grace as I could command, "but I trust you will find it convenient as soon as possible to send to the British Embassy and inform them that I am here."
"And who shall we say has called? A gentleman professing to be the Earl of Lanarkshire with forged papers in the name of Hubert Gascoigne, Esq., who can speak only English when he is officially questioned, but acquires a remarkable mastery of Russian when he is found loitering in one of the most questionable quarters of the city?"
"You may tell them what you please," I answered, putting on an air of boldness which, I am afraid, I did not feel. "So long as somebody in authority is brought here, that is all I ask."
"And to that somebody in authority you would probably play the heroic Britisher, demand a good deal of public fuss, and thus give ample warning to those with whom you are associated. That is not quite the way we are accustomed to deal with things here. If you gentlemen with severely Western ideas of the principles of government will interfere in matters that do not concern you, you must be content to abide by the customs of the country in which you gratify your tastes for meddling."
"I assure you, sir, I have no other tastes or desire than to mind my own business. I know nothing of what you are pleased to call the meddling of men with severely Western ideas. I am here on perfectly legitimate business, and I only ask a fair opportunity of clearing myself."
The officer tapped the forged papers, which now lay on his blotting pad, with his forefinger.
"We know there are several documents of this kind in existence, and we believe we are doing the kindest act to the British Government in dealing promptly and strongly with them and their possessors. But we need not argue the matter. I have sent for you because I have one or two questions to put to you. There were two of you on the train which I was compelled to hold up the other day. Who was the other man?"
"What other man?" I asked, with a view to gaining time.
"The person in the private compartment whose face I regret to admit I did not see, and whose passport I accepted as that of Hubert Gascoigne; if you are Hubert Gascoigne, who was he?' If he be Hubert Gascoigne, you are clearly an impostor."
The logic was irresistible. Was I to give away the Czar and save myself? I had never gained anything at his hands. He had brought the whole of this trouble upon me by his criminal neglect or blundering stupidity in not handing me back my papers before I left the train. I did not in this moment of my indignation with the thoughtless Emperor remember it would have been far easier for me to have sought him out and got my papers back, than for him to have come along the train in public to look for me.
But the very fact that the person appeared to my mind as a weak and stupid creature weighed all the more strongly in his favour. I had long since had a suspicion which amounted almost to a certainty that this well meaning young man was the tool of circumstances and was moulded to the desires and ambitions of stronger minds with power behind them, over which he exercised a nominal control. Had he been a fellow strong enough to look after himself I don't know that I should have helped him in the very first instance. But the fact remained that I had forced my comradeship upon him, and it was out of the question to let him down now.
As I was thus rapidly reviewing the situation within myself the police officer kept his ferret eyes upon me and interrupted my self-examination with a peremptory, "Well?"
"I do not know that I am to be expected to remember all the incidents of a long and wearisome railway journey. I only know that you stopped us, that I gave you as my name one of the titles which belongs to my family, and at the time I did not happen to have my passport handy and did not see the necessity of going to seek for it."
"Do you refer to this?" he asked, tapping the papers I had handed him and smiling with that Mephistophelean leer of his.
"No, I do not," I replied hotly. "I refer to my original papers, which have been purloined, and for which these have been substituted by some malicious person in order to entrap me. But, have a care, sir, you are doubtless under the impression that you have in your custody some harmless faddist whose disappearance will not be noticed, and who will be forgotten within six months. But I may inform you that I have travelled in Europe before, and I always make a point of having my movements covered. I ask you to send to the Embassy for me. I put it in that way because as one who has many friends in your country, and as one whose mission here is one of goodwill and international peace I would prefer it done that way. I wish to give you the fullest opportunity of proving to my superiors that perfect good faith which I desire to believe you have up to now exercised. But I think it also my duty to inform you that if you do not send to them, they will send to you."
Although I had gathered eloquence as I went along, my rhetoric did not disturb this cold-blooded official. He heard me patiently, did not make the slightest attempt to interrupt my lengthy speech, and, when I had finished, smiled indulgently. Yet I somehow thought by the look that came into his eyes that my words had occasioned some little doubt in his mind. The secret movements of the people who arrested me, their scrupulous care to avoid publicity, the whispered message to the concierge of the official who brought me to the hotel, all pointed to a desire for privacy. Following up my little advantage, I added:—
"Your men possibly imagined themselves exceedingly clever. They probably did not know that their kidnapping was not quite so perfect as they imagined."
Having said this with a smile and a bow that I tried to make as mysterious as possible, I took refuge in the wisdom of silence. I thought I had made a slight impression, and tried to keep it up. The official struck his gong twice, and I was again led off to the cells.
I cannot say that for a prisoner I was treated very badly. They fed me fairly well; it was not quite up to Romano's, but I have had worse many a time, and although the plain wooden bedstead was hard enough for an operating table, they had not yet put me on the plank bed and black bread. Knowing what I did of Continental prisons, I came to the conclusion that some other object than mere imprisonment was in the minds of my captors.
Still the time passed all too slowly, and I was tortured every hour of it by the thought that Flora might be in danger. If they had seen me either going to or coming from her father's mysterious dwelling, might they not assume from that mere fact that she was in some way bound up with the plot for which they suspected me. The thought of my little Flora being shut up in a prison, condemned to obscure and ignominious exile possibly, with all the horrors and dangers, the nameless indignities of such a life, drove me frantic.
Would somebody not come near me, some human being with a soul, somebody who would talk to me, quarrel with me, bully me if they liked? Anything but this solitary waiting, waiting; any man but that cold-blooded, ferret-eyed human machine, with his wooden smile and oily imperturbability.
I could almost have fallen on the neck of my huge jailer the following morning when he fetched me once again to the Director's office, and there handed me over to a couple of persons instead of one. There was some small mercy even in this trifling variety.
The official sat at the table as before, and the second man at the moment of my entry had his back to me. The Director again motioned me to a seat, and remarking, "You will ring when you have finished, Prince," left the room.
Not until the door was closed upon us did the other man turn round, and then, with mingled hatred and relief, I recognised Prince Mirski. I loathed the scheming villain, but it was something in this ice-bound place to see a man of feeling even if he were utterly bad and vicious.
"We meet under somewhat altered conditions, Mr. Gascoigne," he said, taking the vacant seat of the Director.
"Gascoigne! I am glad you address me by my right name and I assume you will have the goodness to inform these people who I am."
"Well, that depends."
"Depends! Do you mean to say that you, a gentleman by birth and training, will decline to help another gentleman, by telling the plain truth? How can such an action depend on anything? It is a duty preliminary to any communication between us."
"Not quite preliminary, but I hope consequential," he said with a bland politeness I did not like. "My dear Mr. Gascoigne, we are both men of the world. Let us discuss matters in a commonsense way. You must admit that the circumstances in which you now find yourself are the reverse of pleasant. It is possible that I may be able to help you, but I have two requests to make. The one is personal, the other is political. In the first place, it has come to my knowledge—in fact, you told me yourself—that you are on terms of very close intimacy with Von Grahaun and his daughter."
"I have known them all my life."
"Exactly. And lifelong friendships vary in intensity. Indeed, to come to the point at once, I have already told you I am betrothed to Flora Von Grahaun."
"Look me in the face and tell me as a man that you believe in your own heart she loves you," I said, leaning forward until only the narrow desk stood between us.
"Your question is an impertinence, and you know it," he said, a nasty look coming into his cruel eyes.
"Under some circumstances I admit it might be an impertinence."
"Under all circumstances it is an impertinence for any man to question another in that way when he is told there is a formal betrothal. You spoke to me just now about the duties of a gentleman. It seems to me you had better study the manners of a gentleman before you begin to talk of his duties."
"I shall not come to Prince Mirski when I want to learn either," I said, now thoroughly out of temper. "I tell you, sir, that I have a right to interfere in this matter. I will not stand by and see that young girl sacrificed to any scheming mob. If it were on no other ground than that of common humanity I should be entitled to interfere, but—"
"But you think you have another claim," he hissed, his saturnine face livid with rage. "And you say this in spite of the fact that both the lady and her father have given you to understand that your claim is a piece of sheer vulgar insolence."
Had he seen Von Grahaun and Flora, or was this a chance shot? While I was thinking this over to myself, the Prince mastered his excitement with a marvellous effort, and rising from big chair walked to the upright desk at which he had been standing when I came in.
For a few moments neither of us spoke, and then, in a hard, cold voice, my tormentor began again. "But I came here to talk business, and it is one of the ironies of life that one must do business with whomsoever one is forced, whatever may be one's opinion of their sense of good taste. My first request to you, Mr. Gascoigne, is that you will have the good sense to perceive the obvious, and to cease your attentions to a lady who has no desire to be honoured by your affection. My next request, which possibly you may see fit to consider in conjunction with the other, is that you will tell me all you know about the mysterious fellow-traveller with whom you came to St. Petersburg."
"Countess Blaveski?"
"No, not the Countess. I know as much about her perhaps as you can tell me, although I may have some questions to put to you on that point later, but there was somebody else."
Now how much had the Countess told him? Was he already informed as to the identity of the man to whom I had given my credentials, and did he want to know what I bad been careful to keep from the Countess, viz., my reason for believing that the Emperor desired to travel in secret—or was he entirely ignorant of the whole affair and merely suspicious that there was some mystery unrevealed?
Which ever way it was I determined that this unscrupulous scoundrel should get nothing out of me.
"I decline to have anything further to say to you on either point," I said, "until I am released from this unlawful imprisonment, and then I shall be pleased to talk to you or to any of your colleagues in my own way either at my hotel or at the British Embassy."
"Now don't be a fool, Mr. Gascoigne," he said, with a bitter laugh. "Try and realise your position. You are in the power of those who have been framed to act with remorseless rigour and to move in absolute secrecy. In half an hour you can be seated comfortably in your hotel, an honoured guest in our capital, with nothing said about what has passed, or you can be immediately translated to that dark obscurity from which you will never emerge. Your life will become a drudge and an hourly misery. The outer world will know you no more. From you, the whirl of fashion, the pursuit of pleasure, the society of pleasant companions and beautiful women will be as far removed as though you lived on another planet. Your daily associates will be men from whom the sunshine of life has departed for ever—and all because you persist in a stupid obstinacy that can benefit nobody."
I listened to the Prince's description of my future with an heroic effort to repress a shudder, and when he had finished I looked him squarely in the face.
"You have come here," I said, "to bully me, a prisoner, and you call yourself a man."
"I have come here," he replied, "to advise you for your good. Am I to understand that you scorn my help? Will you or will you not accede to my request?"
"I'll see you in—"
I stopped suddenly. It was hardly worth while descending to language that might appear mere blasphemy—however strongly I felt it—for the sake of such a creature as this.
"You may as well finish it," he said. "I know the place to which you would consign me, and for your good wishes you will now be consigned to something that so closely resembles it as any other experience on earth."
With that he struck the gong, and the officer came in.
"Take him away," he said, "and let there be no more sickly sentimentality with him. Let him feel the grip of the power which our too tender treatment has taught him to despise."
I WAS led back to a cell; a rougher, ruder cell than the one I had left, feeling weary and sick of heart. It was a very different matter to what I had expected. My adventures up to now had thrilled rather than alarmed me. My fears for Flora had certainly aroused in me a sense of foreboding and uneasiness, but the excitement of the incidents that had happened since my arrival in St. Petersburg had kept the warm blood circling in my veins, that weariness, exhaustion, and even hunger, had not concerned me much. But now, with those brutal words ringing in my ears, I knew that the adventure had gone beyond the realms of ordinary romance and had now entered upon the stage of tragedy.
I felt I was hungry. I felt as though I longed for sleep. My body, bruised and worn, cried out for the soft bed and clean sheets to which I had been accustomed; instead, I looked round my cell. The damp stone walls, not even a light, and the sound of the cell door was the only sound I heard hour after hour, and that was a re-echo in my memory.
What a foolish adventure it was, I thought to myself. Except for my extraordinary mania for romance, except for that walk after dinner in Paris, I should have now been safe back in my quarters at the Embassy, leading an ordinary commonplace existence, instead of being shut up in a space not more than 8ft. by 6ft., that smelt of decay, and reminded me more than anything else of the Mausoleum in Paris.
I tried to summon to myself that stubbornness that was supposed to be characteristic of the Gascoigne family, but in vain. However brave a light in my own mind I tried to put upon the situation, it seemed nothing more than desperate. The thought of Flora in danger, the thought of the foul trick that had been played by the Countess, the thought, moreover, of the brutal words of Prince Mirski, put me now in the depths of despondency, now in a very fury of blood hatred. Could I have met Prince Mirski then face to face I would have dashed his brains out against the wall.
I paced up and down cursing, with my fists tight clenched, my lips, now and again when the words failed me so tightly pressed together that the blood trickled down my chin.
At last I determined to seek rest. With difficulty I stumbled into a corner of the cell where a stone ledge was let into the wall. On this I laid myself down and tried to sleep, but my brain was too crowded with images of the last two days to let me court the nod of sleep as speedily as I desired.
For an hour or more I tried all the subterfuges which I had been taught to try and seek rest, but in vain. Somehow, by some means or other, I must have at last dozed off—perhaps for longer than I thought, for I remember starting up to hear the voice of somebody in the cell and the rattle or the iron door. A light appeared across the doorway, a light that, though coming from only an ordinary oil lamp, appeared to me, after those long hours of darkness, so bright that my eyes blinked before the unaccustomed glare. For a while, indeed, I could see nothing, but like a foolish moth I tottered towards the light, to be pulled up suddenly by the harsh, voice of the warder and the grip of his hand on my shoulder.
"Now then, steady, you English swine, that's not the way to be introduced to a lady. Come this way."
He pushed me roughly through the door, and then drove me before him down the passage, directing me with his voice to turn to the right or left, and cursing me as if I were a coster's donkey unwillingly going to market.
I was too sleepy and still too bewildered to protest, and I obeyed him with a meekness which elicited some unflattering remarks about England and the English. Presently, after we had proceeded in this way through some of the most evil-smelling and filthy passages I have ever seen, he halted in front of a padlocked door which evidently separated the actual prison part of the building from the living apartments of the higher officials; but before he let me pass through this door he bound my wrists together behind my back with a pair of handcuffs; then he marched me into a waiting-room, set me with my back against the wall, lounged himself into a comfortable chair, and from that restful position proceeded to give his fancy full play as regards the state of my body and my mind, my morals and manners, myself and my ancestors, and when he had looked at all these things, his conclusion was that they were expletively bad.
He had not quite got through the list of my failings when the door opened. He had just time to spring to his feet and stand at attention, when a heavily veiled lady entered the room. She made a sign to him, he saluted and marched solemnly out of the room, closing the door behind him.
For a few seconds I tried to pierce the veil that hid the face of this strange visitor. I could feel her eyes watching me closely. Then suddenly it came to me as if by telepathy who the woman was. Another second and her voice had betrayed her.
"The pose is interesting, and the attitude, if somewhat stiff, not altogether becoming. But surely you find this room not quite so comfortable as your room at the hotel, Mr. Gascoigne?"
I started forward, the blood rushing to my head with rage, so that I felt, almost intoxicated with anger.
"You!" I cried.
"No scene, I beg of you, Mr. Gascoigne," she replied, as, throwing her veil from her face, she sank back into a chair. "What's the use?" she added, with a suggestive look at my manacled hands.
"I have to thank you for reminding me of my position," I said, leaning back once again against the wall with as easy a pose as I could muster, "And the pleasure of this interview is due to what, my dear Countess? Have you come to gloat or to bargain, or what is it?"
I purposely forced myself to speak with a nonchalance and calmness which I was far from feeling, for one always likes to make the best of a bad position.
My words had their effect upon the Countess. She had come prepared for a storm. To be met with studied coldness put her off her guard. She flushed with annoyance.
"I have come to save you," she said.
"Really," I drawled, raising my eyebrows suddenly. "Very good of you, I'm sure. May I ask if it is your usual habit to play these tricks upon your acquaintances, to go to considerable trouble—even to the extent of forging documents—to get them locked up for a day and a half and then to release them?"
She recovered her self-possession with an effort.
"I have come to release you—on conditions," she said.
"Ah then, my dear Countess, I am not so far out when I suggested that you had come here either to bargain or to gloat; apparently you have come for both."
This was too much for her; she rose to her feet in a very storm of passion.
"I didn't come here to gloat. As for the bargain, well, many would be glad of it. I will give you liberty if you will take another gift from me—myself."
"Your generosity, Countess, overwhelms me," I said, mockingly. "I feel that my freedom—great as it may be—I feel that the absence of these bracelets, which prevent me from shaking you by the hand, are things too small to be paid for by such a priceless gift as yourself. I get my freedom, and am allowed to do my ordinary business, to occupy myself on my lawful occasions; I take to myself in holy matrimony a very charming lady, who unites in a very interesting career the profession of a spy and a blackmailer, in whose favour two things at least can be said; that the Anarchists dislike her and that she herself dislikes St. Petersburg waiters; a very natural objection, to my way of thinking."
As I let these bitter words fall from me a very strange change came over her face. At first when I spoke of "spy" and "blackmailer," she smiled somewhat bitterly, and the smile became more bitterly cynical when I spoke of Anarchists, but when I concluded my little outburst with what I purposely intended to be an anti-climax on the subject of St. Petersburg waiters, who indeed—unless they are French—are neither pleasant nor useful, she turned as white as a sheet and stumbled back gasping into her chair.
"What do you know? What do you know?" she cried, her eyes glaring at me ferociously from her white face.
"Perhaps more than you could care for me to know, under the circumstances, Countess," I replied.
"You reject my offer then because—". She paused, and I filled up the gap with a cryptical statement:
"Because of those circumstances, Countess."
All the while I was wondering what the deuce we were talking about. She grasped the arms of her chair tightly, leaning forward.
"Only because of those circumstances?" she said, eagerly.
"Are they not sufficient?" I retorted, with raised eyebrows.
"To some, yes, but not to me. I can have it set aside. I have influence."
But I was tired of talking in the dark. I seemed to make no progress. Beyond the fact that she did not like waiters, and that the particular waiter whose whispering in her ear had sent her off into a fainting fit, I knew nothing; moreover, I was weary of the interview.
"Set what aside?" I said, forgetting my usual diplomatic skill.
Surprise, astonishment, and relief were visibly depicted on her face at this remark of mine, the folly of which I was to understand later. She did not speak for a second or two, and when she did speak her alarm was all gone; she was even smiling.
"My dear Mr. Gascoigne, what circumstances but these? I can have the decree which has so unfortunately incarcerated you in this unpleasant building set aside, and you shall be a free man if—"
And then she was standing on her feet before me. She came across the floor. She was even—this extraordinary woman— kneeling at my feet.
"If, Hubert, you will return the love that I bear you. If you will give yourself to me. Whatever else I am, I am a woman capable of love, capable of a passion of hatred as well as love. I have loved you ever since that moment in Paris, and my love has grown every day until now it seems like a fire. Hubert, when you saved me that day in the railway carriage, and afterwards in the wood at that hunting lodge. Oh, my darling, forgive me all I have done! A silly, foolish woman I am; yes, a bad woman, perhaps; still, with you, capable of much. If you would give me your love this life that I hate would pass away from me. Oh, Hubert, Hubert, have pity—"
There she was kneeling at my feet, while I stood against the wall with the handcuffs biting into my flesh: a nice position, indeed, in which to listen to such an outburst of passion. But I was in no mood to be played with. I had had enough of this woman, and the thought of the harm she had done me with Flora hardened my heart.
"This is superbly melodramatic, and does you credit," I said, with a laugh.
She still knelt at my feet, sobbing.
"Hubert, my darling, have I not humbled myself enough?" and her voice was soft and tender, very unlike the voice of the spy and blackmailer.
"I really can't say," I said, steeling myself against all emotion; "You evidently like it or you wouldn't be doing it. If I might he allowed to express my own feelings without giving offence I would frankly tell you that it bores me awfully."
"Oh, Hubert, can't you see the agony I suffer? Can't you realise what it means for a woman like me to be brought to this? Hubert, I love you. Is there any disgrace for a woman to love a man? Can you have pity? Isn't it enough that I kneel before you, but that you must spurn me with sneers and gibes. There are few women that would do what I am doing."
I kept the picture of Flora steadily before me.
"I beg your pardon, Countess, but we are not accustomed to see ladies of birth debase themselves in the country to which I have the honour to belong."
It was brutal, but it electrified her into life. She sprang to her feet, her cheeks pale and tear-stained. She looked at me with a sort of horror, and without a word turned and went to the door.
I looked out of the window until I heard the door shut, until I heard it open again and the warder's voice came as a relief to the tension and strain of the last half-hour, ordering me back to my cell.
I went without a word, hearing nothing of his abuse, almost seeing nothing.
I GAVE way to a fit of raging despair in my cell that night. I threatened the warder, and demanded to see the Governor, and asked for justice. I talked a great deal of jingoistic nonsense about what the British Government would do when they heard of a British subject being treated with an absolute lack of justice and propriety.
But the warder laughed and shrugged his shoulders. I told him that I wished to see his superiors, that I wished to know why I was detained. He shrugged his shoulders still more impassively.
'You've probably done nothing, or something, or more likely you're a suspect. That's enough to send you where you're going to."
"Where is that?" I said.
"To Archangel."
"But why? What have I done?" I repeated in Russian. "I am an English subject and I demand justice."
The man shrugged his shoulders again and looked at me curiously.
"Have you no justice here?" I said. "Am I to be taken away to prison without knowing with what I am charged, without any semblance of a trial, to be locked up like a beast?"
"Who knows," said the warder; "Perhaps."
At his words I started up more furiously than ever, and strode up and down my cell fuming and fretting like a madman. The man stood at the door watching me closely, almost moved into amusement.
"Perhaps you're a spy," he said "and will be shot. Perhaps you've offended the police. Perhaps someone high up doesn't like you. It's all the game. You can't escape your fate."
Then he turned on his heel and banged the door behind him.
Not a wink of sleep did I get that night, and when early in the morning, in the bitter cold, I was ordered from my cell, I came out, my eyes bloodshot, my whole frame exhausted to the point of nervous prostration.
I was brought out into the prison yard, handcuffed, and herded with some of the most impassive-looking criminals I have ever seen. But I hardly noticed them, nor the inspection that ensued by certain officials. Even now, when I write, the scene passes before me more like a scroll of pictures than of anything real. They gave me bread and tea. I ate and drank without knowing what I was doing. Then came the march to the station in the dark winter's morning, the monotonous crunch of the snow under our feet, the rattle of the chains that bound us together; then the railway station and the railway carriages—or, rather, cattle trucks. All these incidents I could not for the life of me depict, for even now they seem to have a sense of unreality as they had then. I felt that I was always on the point of waking up from a nightmare that still continued.
We must have been about two hours on the journey when I began to waken to my senses, to look round me, to notice my companions in misfortune. If the truth be told, they took their misfortune with a joviality and unconcern that did them credit. Indeed, they laughed among themselves, and I found myself listening to their conversation. Two of them were students, who had offended the police: the majority, however, were Russian peasants, guilty of displeasing some earthly Russian god or another. But one and all, I noticed, with the exception, perhaps, of a little dark man who cowered in a corner of the truck, were unanimous in considering themselves lucky that they escaped military service at the front: a prison in Archangel was better than the shambles in Manchuria, to their mind. One student even whistled the _Marsellaise_, and when asked by a suspicious warder what the song was he told him with solemnity that it was a paean of praise for the Czar's armies in Manchuria and for peace and good order at home. With this explanation the warder was perfectly satisfied; he even looked favourably upon the student.
I got into conversation with him: fortunately he could speak English, and was delighted when I told him that I was an Englishman. He belonged to the party or Modern Reform, and was undergoing this penance for addressing his fellow-students on the necessity of some form of representative government, and for continuing his speech after the police had appeared to clear the hall in which the meeting took place. He was curious about my own story, but when he saw that I was not anxious to tell him much, he refrained from further questions and plunged into a discussion upon the war, and the madness of the St. Petersburg Government in bringing the country rapidly to ruin.
"But we have all these sufferings, Monsieur, because of our alliance with France, a republic, based upon liberty, equality, and fraternity, that has lent our Government, which is based on a system of bribery and bureaucracy, millions and millions of pounds. And where does the money go? Into the pockets of the Grand Dukes. It helps to support the police against the people. It has helped to build a worthless rule which has plunged us into a hopeless war with Japan. The people who suffer for this money, the toilers and workmen in this over-big country, have to pay the interest, and to pay this interest the horse is taken from the peasant's plough and the cow from the peasant's stable, and he is brought to destitution and his family to starvation. That is the price we've had to pay for the French Alliance. We have suffered, and we shall continue to suffer."
Then he set to whistling, ironically, the _Marsellaise_, the song of hope, the song of liberty and justice, the song peculiar to the people who unconsciously and for political reasons had helped to enslave Russia still further.
It was a curious fact—over which I pondered—that the French peasant, proud of his few acres, prepared to shed his blood to protect these acres for which his ancestors had risen in arms, strong in his belief in liberty, equality, and fraternity, had provided the money which had brought Russia and the Russians to such a condition of disaster and distress.
While I was talking to the student I suddenly became aware of the fact that the little dark man in the corner of the truck was watching me intently. He sat opposite me, and so noticeable did his gaze become that at last I bent over to him and said in Russian, "You seem to take an interest in my face?"
He shook his head, implying that he did not understand.
I tried him in French.
"What makes you think that?" he said, his eyebrows coming down over his little beady eyes.
I explained that the manner in which he continued to look at me made me imagine that perhaps we had met before.
"I only looked at a comrade in misfortune," he replied.
Almost before the words were out of his mouth the memory of his face flashed back to me. I saw a room in Paris, I saw myself a prisoner, surrounded by a number of people, and then, out of a sea of faces, this one came back to me.
"Ah, yes," I said, "you once assisted in sentencing me to death, and here we are companions in misfortune."
"Hush!" said the man; "don't talk so loud. You might spoil my only chance."
"Were you caught, then?" I continued.
"I was not caught. I am here as a suspect, and at the first opportunity I shall be free."
"So you followed me to St. Petersburg?" I said, at a venture. "How did you arrange that little affair at the shooting-box?"
"I don't understand, sir."
"Come, come," I said, "You know all about it. You know that certain of your brotherhood were very much concerned with a lady of our acquaintance, to whom I wish no actual positive harm, but if by chance your plans had been carried through successfully a great deal of unpleasantness for me would have been saved."
The man brightened, "You, too, then have suffered through her?"
"That is unfortunately so. And you, of course?"
"I found that she was a spy."
"And you came here, I suppose, to kill her, a very natural sentiment, I acknowledge, even if society does not see it in exactly the same light."
Just then the train pulled up at a wayside station, and we were driven out on to the platform, while some special officials formally took us in charge. The gang to which I belonged was taken over by a man at the first sight of whom I more than started. He was the same build as my cousin Tony; the same height, and carried his big frame with the same Irish swing. There was a vast difference in the sparkle and colour of the eyes and a lack of refinement in the lips and nostrils. It was not the same face, but put this man in among the Irish peasantry and he would pass for a man of the same race.
We were then, after this slight break, once more hurried back to our trucks, and the long, monotonous, journey began again.
Up to now it had been bitterly cold, but once mid-day was passed it became a few degrees warmer, and then came the snow, covering the world outside in an impenetrable curtain of white. It fell thickly and slowly, with that ghostly silence that always makes snow far more mysterious than a mere downpour of rain. So thickly, indeed, did it fall that on reaching some wayside station it was decided by the officials that it would not be safe to go further. A warder came into our truck, egged most of us into wakefulness with many curses, threats, and brutalities, and hurried us out into the snow into a large, open pen, which, I supposed, was used for cattle, and was now put to a purpose which clearly the Russian police regarded as exactly similar. Here we were kept for three or four hours until daylight had gone. Then we were marched into a large building that stood on the line, a sort of store-house, flanked on both sides by a guard-house.
I had thought the warder in the prison at St. Petersburg brutal, but his brutality was as nothing compared with the attitude adopted by the man whose likeness to Tony I had noticed. To me, especially, he paid his attention, kicking me with his heavy boots whenever I found a comfortable corner in which to rest myself, and hurling at me blasphemies and insults that exasperated me beyond endurance. But even he, as the night wore on, grew weary of this amusement, and about nine o'clock I was left to lie down as well as I could in the only corner left to me near the badly-fitting door, where the wind from the snow-covered land without chilled me to the bone. None the less, I slept. For, given sufficient weariness, sleep will come to most men.
I have no idea what time it was, but I was suddenly aroused from a confused sleep by somebody shaking me gently by the shoulder. With your wrists handcuffed it is rather hard to rise, but this, together with the fact that I was but half awake, kept me from acknowledging the shake for some seconds. But the man, whoever he was, shook me again by the shoulder, and I felt his hand travel down to my arm until it came to my manacled wrists. It paused for a moment, then I heard a click, and the handcuffs were off me. I stumbled as well as I could to my feet. A man's hands were placed over my lips.
"Not a word. Come!"
Quietly and stealthily he opened the door of the building, and his face stood outlined by the light of the stars. To my amazement I saw it was the warder.
Again he put his fingers to his lips and beckoned me to make haste. As quietly as I could I glided through the narrow opening he had left between the two doors and found myself, like a man bemused, once more in the snow. In a second the man had the door locked again, and, beckoning to me, walked in the shadow of the building. I followed. The man kept close by the wall, and when he got to the corner he turned.
As I went round after him I suddenly came face to face with two men; one was a warder, and the other to my astonishment was Tony.
With a sudden impulse he held out both his hands.
"Hubert," he whispered, "it's all right old chap. Keep your eye on the man, do anything he tells you, follow him without question wherever he leads you... I can't explain, but do it. And now goodbye. You must go back."
He shook my hand warmly and disappeared into the shadows cast by the building.
I was left standing, absolutely astonished, never having spoken a word.
The warder put his hand on my shoulder.
"You must go back," he whispered.
I turned immediately and followed him, and in another minute was lying in my corner by the door, quite a different person to the Hubert Gascoigne of ten minutes before—for I had hope in my heart.
I SAW nothing of Tony for a day or two, but I knew he was somewhere about. I wondered with what gang of prisoners he was travelling, how he had got there, why he was there? At times I felt ashamed of myself for my joy at seeing him, but as we plodded wearily on, delayed at times by the blinding snow, forced ahead at others by our jailers—who were almost as sick of the prospect as ourselves—I reflected that we had both been in scrapes of all kinds, and buoyed myself up with the hope that this might be another of a series of successfully encountered difficulties.
I could get nothing from the stern faced warder. To all outward appearances the incident of the other night might have been a delusion or a dream. Indeed, as I saw him pass and repass me, his dull eyes never giving the slightest indication that I was any more to him than any other prisoner, I wondered if, after all, I had not been dreaming.
My doubt on this point was dispelled one night when we had halted in a hideously dark, dismal plain, with a few miserable huts ranged in the shelter of a low clumps of trees on the outskirts of a forest, a place more calculated to chill the soul of a man than any other spot that ever existed on God's earth. On the one side the driving snow, with all its mocking whiteness, on the other side the gloomy, icicle-laden trees. The only sign that we were on the same planet as civilisation was a well-cut road that evidently led to somewhere, and along this road there appeared to be a fair amount of traffic for this part of the world. One or two travellers passed as we were driven into the huts, pulling their sables up round their ears: they averted their faces from us, not, I am inclined to think, because they were devoid of all human feeling, but because they dared not look upon the fate which in this land of tyranny might at any moment overtake the best of them.
As I was filing into one of the huts literally at the root of an enormous tree, the gruff warder dug me in the ribs with the butt of his rifle. I turned towards him, and he just allowed the lid of one eye to drop in a dull, dismal sort of wink. The sign, meagre as it was, sufficed. I kept on the alert that night, and managed to get a place near the door; there was little trouble about this, for the other poor wretches were glad enough to get as far away from it as possible.
As the night wore on I heard the soldiers change guard, and with the alert instinct bred of adversity, I perceived that the military were leaving our particular end of the camp to the care of the man in charge of the gangs, ready to turn out if their assistance was needed, which, helpless and handcuffed as we were- -and had been for days—was extremely unlikely emergency. A big warder snorted and grumbled outside. So long as he remained there I feigned sleep. But soon after he was relieved by my own particular custodian. I felt a brawny hand slide down my arms as before. Silently he took me out into the open, and in a few moments I stood face to face once more with Tony. He was looking remarkably well under the circumstances, but under no conditions could I conceive Tony as looking anything else but cheerful.
"You'll be wondering how in the name of the whole calendar of saints I got here," he said.
"That's the beauty of being trained in the ancient conditions of dear old Ireland. Ah, my boy, Hubert, these old Secret Society men in the times of Lord Edward Fitzgerald knew how to organise, and faith, if I had only started on these thick-headed Russians with the same plan a while sooner we should have them ready, instead of coming forth, as I fear me they will do some day too soon, a disjointed mob. However, dear boy, I'm not here to talk to you about these things, The point is I am here."
"God forgive me, Tony," I said, "I am glad you are here, though I know I shouldn't be."
"Shouldn't be, and why?"
"What is torture to me with my Saxon philosophy will be death to you, with your Celtic passion, old boy," I said, sadly.
"Yes, but the torture is not quite the same, although it's bad enough in all conscience to know you are suffering," he replied, with a catch in his voice.
"Not the same? Have they, then, a grading of prisoners here?"
"A grading of prisoners! Not that I'm aware of, and faith, it's little of the prisoners besides yourself that I'll be able to see, and I suppose I won't be able to talk to you for long."
A light dawned upon me. It was not so bad as I expected. Tony, then, was not a prisoner. But how, in all wonder, had he got here?
"I see you don't quite sum the situation up correctly yet," he burst in. "Let me, in a word or two, explain it. I can't tell you the whole plan, because you are not one of us. But this much I can tell you; when you get back to the old country, remember if you can, that it was the plan and the plot of an Irishman that worked the oracle for you."
"On my father's estate is an old farmer who told me how the boys worked in the days of the Rebellion. They had groups and groups, and they blended them together in a marvellous way, and faith when I heard of the trouble among the people in Russia I brought it over here for their own special benefit."
"You popped in the other night on a group of twenty who can trust each other, but they know of no other men or of their dealings outside except through me as their leader. I in turn am in a group of a dozen leaders of the groups, and we, in turn, through our leader which is myself, as you may suppose, communicate with groups of other leaders of groups, and so on we spread the work of organisation until there are thousands of men walking about day by day in close touch with each other, working together, possibly living in the same house, without knowing each other or realising that they all belong to the same organisation. If we had had the thing perfect I'd have sent word round and brought enough of them along to bust up this bally procession and carry you off in triumph. But the next best thing I could do was to set myself out to find a man who was one of ourselves. Failing that, I had to use baksheesh: at any rate, here I am, ready to kick myself for not discovering earlier what had become of you, and ready to be called a fool by the biggest born idiot alive for not tumbling to it that the bally officer that night was too polite to be trusted, and that he and the concierge were working the oracle in that whispered conversation as we passed through the hall."
"You know what has happened then?"
"I can pretty well guess. When you did not come back, and that worm of a policemen said he couldn't wait any longer, I made inquiries in the hotel, and was told that you had left in a carriage. I'd a pretty good idea what that meant, and I ask you to believe me that, although I may seem to have been slow, I have not been letting the grass grow under my feet. When you know a bit more about this rotten country you will understand, however, what it means to discover a man once the Secret Service has got hold of him."
"Well, it's good of you. Tony, to risk so much, especially as it seems hopeless."
"Not at all. Nothing is hopeless as long as you have muscles and brains on your side, though I'm bound to confess to you that I have no very clear plans in my head at the moment. The great thing is that we're together, and now we must make some plan for getting you out of this beastly mess. I have managed to secure just a few minutes with you, but I shall keep hanging on to the trail of this ragged regiment and I want you to be always on the look-out for me. If, at any time, a man whispers in your ear or calls out in some apparently irrelevant sentence the words, 'Time is on our side,' be ready to—"
A big, burly form blotted out the moonlight, and Tony turned suddenly round as the heavy warder confronted us.
"Your time is short," he said, gruffly, to Tony.
The coincidence startled me. Had he heard Tony's words and was this a piece of brutal cynicism. Something in the man's tone, manner, or look apparently attracted Tony's attention. I saw his bright black Irish eyes sparkle with excitement, but, getting his big muscular frame between myself and the jailer, he appeared at first to be meditating physical resentment of the interruption, and as I saw how well his athletic limbs matched the size and bulk of the Russian's, and knew that while the sizes coincided there was flesh beneath the uniform, where there was hard muscle beneath the mufti, I would have been quite contented to let my chances of freedom rest on a combat between the two.
Instead of hard words, however, the two men fell into an apparently casual conversation, which with the knowledge of the vital importance of time, irritated me beyond endurance. For two or three minutes they talked, and it gradually dawned upon me that each was fencing with the other, till I heard Tony ask in a tone of apparent unconcern.
"Are you a true Russian?"
"I am a true man," replied the official.
The Irishman, leaning forward, whispered hurriedly in the other man's ear.
The officer hesitated a while, and then drew himself away in the darkness. In a very short time he returned, but without Tony, and I saw no more of my cousin that night.
As the fellow pushed me along he bent over me and whispered a little less gruffly than he had ever yet addressed me...
"Have you the blood of the Fitzgeralds in you, too?"
What a remarkable question to ask in this wilderness. And then I thought suddenly of the strange likeness to Tony, and, meeting one question with another, said, "Are you?"
The man hesitated, and wheeling me round till we stood facing each other in the moonlight, he said in his thick Russian voice, but with a strange softness here and there that seemed foreign to the rest.
"It's a story our grandfathers talk about, but I have been taught to love the name of Fitzgerald, as I have also been taught to hate the country I thought you came from."
"Well, you haven't shown me a great deal of love. I'll admit," I retorted, surprised at my own daring.
"Oh, that's a necessary part of the game," he said with a catch in his tones that brought before me like a flash his torture of mind at the hideous double life he was forced to lead.
"But think yourself lucky all the same," he added, "that the comrade we have just left has intervened on your behalf. They tell me Ireland is a better place now than it once was, but when my ancestors were driven out they were forced to find refuge, wherever there was soil to place their feet on."
I had heard often of the ubiquitous Scot, and had been told that the Irishman is not a long way behind him. It was another case of the Irishman being in office wherever he goes except in his own country. The man had got a somewhat distorted view of things outside Russia, and much mixture of Russian blood with this strain of the Fitzgerald clan had smothered the brightness and romance of the Celtic temperament. But the little drop that remained sufficed to make him a born conspirator.
With a diplomacy that was possibly excusable under the circumstances I refrained from telling him that my relationship with Tony was not one that gave me any claim to be a Fitzgerald. In any case, there was no time now for more talking. We had already been too long away, and in a few minutes I was sleeping the first comfortable nap I had had since my arrest.
In the morning I felt refreshed and fit, not only by the events of the night, but also by the brightness of the morning.
It had stopped snowing, and the air was clear, crisp, and bracing. The snow drifts and icicles on the trees glistened in the sun. Compared with last night's picture, the situation was quite charming. There was a rugged grandeur about it after all, in spite of its desolation and despair.
Expecting to be hustled on at day-break, we were somewhat surprised to find ourselves allowed to sleep as long as we wished; our food was brought round to us with much grumbling, but with no commands to hurry up.
An hour or so later we were brought out and moved on a mile or so, where a rough sort of apology for a jail stood on a piece of rising ground. It was pretty much of a ruin, with the exception of a strong wall which ran right round it. It was obviously not permanently occupied, and but for the fact that we were to be kept waiting some time they would not have taken the trouble to put it in order for us.
I now understood why my jailer had been able to bring Tony and I together last night. The superior officers had gone ahead and fitted up a more or less comfortable place for themselves, where they had enjoyed a Bacchanalian evening. In the early morning the soldiers and officials had been preparing the place for us, and as we marched in it became evident that our plans had been suddenly changed. Instead of lying manacled in a wayside camp, guarded by soldiers while we slept, to be moved on at daybreak, it had been decided to keep us in the neighbourhood for some little time, and we were put behind this wall so that some of the soldiers could be spared.
I was driven into a blockhouse standing on the highest part of the slope, from which I was able to get a good view of the road, though that impregnable high wall, all round which there was a deep dip in the ground from the inside, effectively separated me from the traffic without.
As the morning wore on the situation more clearly explained itself. Soldiers were sent off on horseback along the road, with orders which some of the prisoners overheard. Further batches of people were being brought on, and we were to wait in this spot for them.
In the favourable weather the passengers on the road became more numerous, and, permitted to exercise myself outside the blockhouse, I watched their sledges with something more than a casual interest. To look upon free men, who were not officials, was becoming a novel sight for me. The jingling of bells had a strange fascination, and I was especially attracted by a fine team of horses that came cantering along with a splendidly equipped sledge, and as it drew near the camp I noticed it had only one occupant, a lady, amply wrapped in the richest sables. I could see from this distance that she was a beautiful woman, who carried a proud bearing, as though she thoroughly enjoyed the crisp, winter air. How many of such women had I met and danced with at Court balls in the days that I was almost beginning to forget! I had often discussed with them these long cold drives across the plain, and heard them speak in glowing terms of the delights of sledging on a bright winter's day.
I saw the officer in charge go forward with a run as the driver pulled the horses back on their haunches.
The lady intended to combine an inspection of the convicts with her morning drive. This was too much for me. I had not become sufficiently hardened to submit myself like a caged tiger as part of a show. I turned back into the blockhouse and made for the furthest corner, where I curled myself up in the hope that the lady would miss me when she went the round of the monstrosities.
I was not allowed to hide myself for long: the official accompanying the visitor promptly kicked all the other occupants of the blockhouse out into the open, and, bowing to the lady, left her contemplating me as I lay sulking on the floor.
"There's no special reason, is there, why you should hide your face from me," she said.
"Good heavens!" It was the Countess. What fiendish plot was now on foot to torture me!
"I think you might give me a warmer welcome, Hubert." she pleaded. "I have driven miles through the snow to see you and to save you."
The woman spoke in such a soft, tender, winsome voice that I could hardly believe so much beauty and tenderness could be associated with so much that was vile and detestable.
Perhaps I was getting weaker with suffering, but I admit that I rose to my feet with something akin to friendliness towards this woman, who, whatever her faults, could speak a kind word; a treasure, indeed, nowadays.
As I might have guessed had I been able to reason, she misconstrued my meaning entirely as I murmured a few awkward words of gratitude.
Throwing her arms about my neck, allowing her soft sables to comfort me with a delightful warmth I had not felt for days, she whispered, "Thank God, I am in time. You will leave here within an hour. In my sledge we will drive together back to freedom, back to happiness, back to love."
"Countess, you misunderstand me," I said, my old repugnance fully roused. "This is as embarrassing to me as it is unjust to yourself. The last word between us was said or should have been said when we parted in St. Petersburg."
She paced the floor of the blockhouse excitedly. There was a war of passion within her, and I stood aside and waited. Would pride or love prevail, and this distressing scene be ended? I had not the wrath of the newly-injured to goad me on to bitter words. I was beginning to settle down to the grim philosophy of endurance, but I wanted the woman gone.
Of a sudden she halted, and placing her hand on my arm, she said with enforced calmness:
"Mr. Gascoigne, I have brought you to this. To see you suffer, to know that you have gone into the world of outer darkness is more than I can bear. Whether you love me or whether you hate me, you must and shall escape from this. I make no terms, I ask no conditions now. I have that in my possession, that which will make you free. It is mine to use or not as I will. Will you drive with me to the nearest wayside hostelry, and there if you will we may part for ever."
It was a tempting offer, and I had a feeling that it was made in all good faith. No human being is entirely bad and this woman, with all her beauty and her charm, must surely have some good points.
She saw that I hesitated, one of her hands was still on my arm, the handcuffs had been removed from my wrists now that we were within walls, and she put her other hand in mine confidingly.
We must have looked a weird pair in that prison house, a gorgeously dressed member of the Russian nobility apparently caressing a criminal.
I was framing the words in which to answer her offer, and I still held her hand in mine.
She leaned forward till her face almost touched mine, and whispered "Have pity on me! At least relieve me of the torment of life-long remorse."
"Now, then, this is your place for the present."
I started at the sound of the warder's voice. I started still more as two people were thrust into the blockhouse.
I still held the Countess's hand; her other hand was still on my arm. Her back was to the door. She did not see the newcomers. She only knew that we had been interrupted, and that time was precious.
"Yes or no?" she whispered, passionately.
"No," I said, and as the Countess turned round in her despair she found herself face to face with Flora Von Grahaun and her father.
There was a sound of galloping horses, the officer appeared at the door, beckoned the Countess out, and then drew himself up smartly at the salute. Somebody high in authority had arrived. I remember vaguely realising this, although my immediate thoughts were for Flora.
"Good heavens!" I cried, "Flora, are you here? What is the meaning of this? Thank God, at any rate, I am here also."
The girl drew herself up proudly, looked me in the eyes for just a moment, then, inclining her head slightly towards the door where the Countess still stood beside the officer, she took her father by the arm and led him slowly away to a rough bench in the far corner of the blockhouse.
I COULD hear the bells outside still jingling as the horses shook themselves, and a man's voice speaking in commanding tones. A man's voice that I was not long in recognising. Flora, too, had recognised it, and I saw old Von Grahaun turn pale. "Mirski," he muttered.
Even Flora, I saw out of the corner of my eye, was alarmed, and I noted with a certain amount of satisfaction that when her father mentioned the Prince's name she looked at me quickly as to one to whom she might possibly turn for support. It was only the glance of a second; in another moment she was sitting there, with her back half turned to me, as proud and disdainful as ever.
But I was glad that I had refused the Countess's offer; glad, not only because I did not wish to take favours from such a woman, but because it gave me an opportunity of being near Flora. Moreover, it quite checkmated the Countess, for it was clear that while she had been responsible for my arrest, she had not assisted in the persecution of the Von Grahauns. Also, the fact that I might possibly be of use to the Von Grahauns if I effected my escape filled me with a certain joy. We lovers delight in piling favours on those we love, and if we cannot do it by rescuing them from death or defending them against a thousand foes, we are reduced to the common methods of heaping gold and jewels upon them if we have the means. But to me the opportunity might come of doing a practical service to Flora. If I could escape, why not she? I was sure that Tony would do all in his power to assist me.
But while I was turning these things over in my mind our prison door was opened, and the harsh voice of our warder cried out:
"Joseph Von Grahaun and Flora Von Grahaun, you're wanted."
Father and daughter rose to their feet at the summons.
"Who wants us?" said old Von Grahaun, and I noticed that there was a tremor in his voice.
"Curse you! That's no affair of yours," said the warder, pushing him towards the door. "Come."
Without another word they crossed the threshold, the door clanged back, and I was left alone with my friend the anarchist.
I had noticed during the few moments that I was able to pay any attention to him that he had been curiously excited all day. No sooner were we left alone, than he dragged his meagre little form across to my bench.
"Comrade," he said, whispering into my ear in his voluble French, "keep a good heart; tonight all will be well."
"Why? What is going to happen?" said I.
"Ah! you will see. I have friends, and they work at night." His face was very descriptive, and the shrug he gave his shoulders implied a depth of meaning: but I was entirely unable to gather exactly what he did mean.
"I don't understand," I said.
"Ah, but you will see to-night." The little man hurried back to his own bench as the door swung open.
Again came the voice of the warder, "The prisoner calling himself Hubert Gascoigne is wanted."
I rose, and passed obediently in front of him as he held the door open.
Outside he whispered to me, 'You will be moved into your different cells tonight. The Prince is dining with the officers, and the work of inspection is suspended. At ten o'clock this gang will be distributed, but the male and female prisoners, the Von Grahauns, will be taken first to the guard-room for a private interview with the Prince, who will leave his hosts at their vodka. The guard will be moved away from the spot. My comrade will come on duty at 9.30. You understand—my comrade.' With that he winked his dull eye, and, taking me roughly by the arm, shouted aloud —
"And there is to be less chattering and talking in this crowd."
With a push he sent me into the blockhouse and I was once again left alone with the friendly anarchist.
The warder's words had stimulated me with excitement and energy. It was then, I surmised, about five o'clock in the afternoon. I had four and a half hours to wait. And then! Well, I had no clear plan of action. I did not understand his reference to Mirski and the Von Grahauns. What did this meeting with Mirski mean, and what effect was it supposed to have upon my doings? The suggestion that the guard was to be moved from the spot sounded strange. Heavens, did it mean...?
I sat there on my bench, beating the devil's tattoo with my feet, the while the Anarchist hummed songs to himself, now and then exhorting me to be of good heart, as the night would bring wonders. I paid no attention to his words, too wrapt was I in my own plans.
I suppose not an hour had elapsed since I had received my message when the tramp of feet was heard outside: the door opened, and Von Grahaun and Flora once more appeared, the latter carrying herself erect, with a high colour in her face, the former looking more careworn than ever, and evidently dejected and cast down. As before, Flora took no notice of me, but seated herself by her father as far away from my bench as was possible.
She began whispering excitedly to her father, and a few words now and again fell upon my ears. She seemed to be very excited, and Von Grahaun appeared to be protesting and excusing some attitude he had adopted.
"I tell you," I heard her say, her voice rising unconsciously in her excitement. "I tell you father, it was because of a bargain that he has not fulfilled. It was for your sake and for your immunity from danger that I promised. And now how will my marriage help you? He has already broken his oath. Will he not break it again?"
"My daughter," said Von Grahaun in quavering tones, "we have four hours to consider. Let us be calm and talk the matter over reasonably." Then his voice sank again, so that I could not catch what he said. Apparently this argument had no weight with Flora, for she leaned back against the wall and closed her eyes, now and again shaking her head as her father became more emphatic.
After an hour of this one-sided argument, Von Grahaun seemed satisfied that he could not move her from her purpose. Then he too, leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes in reflection.
I tried to follow their example, realising that it was little use to excite myself unnecessarily and to doze, to bridge over the hours that must elapse before the time for action arrived. Only the Anarchist seemed determined not to sleep. Minute after minute he continued humming his songs of the sunny south, sitting there with his arms folded, a very picture of contentment.
The door was now locked upon us, and we knew nothing of what was going on without. Three hours passed like this, and I heard nine o'clock strike. Then I gave up all thought of sleep. I looked at Flora. She, too, was awake, but still leant against the wall trying to doze. As for Von Grahaun, kindly forgetfulness had fallen upon him, and he was sleeping as peacefully as a child.
I began to count the seconds as near as I could, marking each group of sixty off on my fingers. Got through half an hour; then another five, then another five; then for a space I stopped and listened, and went at it again, one, two, three and so on to sixty. It must have passed the quarter when I counted another five minutes—ten minutes to go.
Then suddenly the Anarchist stopped humming his song: the silence broke the continuity of my senses, just as the sudden stoppage of a screw that one has heard hour after hour and week after week on board ship brings one together with a jerk.
I heard a step outside. It was quite dark now, except for one dim ray of light which fell upon the side where the Anarchist and the Von Grahauns sat, the place was in complete darkness. But I did not need my eyes to tell me that Tony had arrived, and the loud voice in which he summoned Joseph and Flora Von Grahaun was a shocking imitation of the warder's vocal notes. Apparently, however, neither Von Grahaun nor Flora, had the slightest idea that the guard had been changed. Flora woke her father, helped him half stumbling to his feet, and together they went out. I thought as they passed that Flora gave one pleading glance in my direction, but it must only have been imagination. Then again silence fell. Five minutes more and I strained my ears. The Anarchist, too, was listening for something. Again the sound of a key in the lock, and with difficulty I refrained from springing to my feet.
"The prisoner who calls himself Hubert Gascoigne, come out. You're wanted."
I pretended to drag myself to my feet and adopt a weary and crestfallen attitude as I approached the door.
"Be quick," said Tony's voice, "you lazy blackguard."
I hurried, obediently. In a second I was outside, the lock was turned, and Tony was standing before me, a smile on his good- natured face.
"Talk about the 'Tale of Two Cities' and 'The Only Way.'" he said. "This is not in it."/p>
"What do you propose to do?" I said hurriedly. "Get you away," he replied, still grinning. "But what about the Von Grahauns? I can't leave them here with that brute."
"Oh, we must take them along with us, but villainy has this time done us a good turn. They are with the Prince at the present moment. There's a solitary sentry posted a distance away to keep off intruders. He has left the officers drunk at mess and cleared all the soldiers away from that part of the gaol."
"Well, what are we to do?"
"Do for the sentry as well as we can," replied Tony, "and as quietly as we can, for if there's the slightest noise we shall have a whole regiment of artillery down upon us. But come, we must not stay here." And with that he walked out into the starlit night.
"Don't speak a word," said Tony. "Just follow me. The Prince is over there."
I saw a sort of wooden blockhouse, from one corner of which there streamed a flood of light. It stood at the end of one of the walls which enclosed the prison in a square, and, fortunately, the mean light cast a deep shadow on the snow. Within the space of this shadow we crept along the wall until we reached the house. There under the window we halted, while an angry voice fell upon our ears.
"Never!" said the voice of Flora, "You have broken the compact with my father, and I break our compact with you. Our marriage is a proposition which I shall refuse to discuss."
"But, Flora!" exclaimed the voice of Mirski, "I assure you that I had no hand in this. As soon as I heard you had been arrested I came post haste. I always warned your father that his connection would bring him into trouble, but he has refused to take my advice; even now, only with great danger to myself can I effect his escape. The police have had their eye upon him for a long time.
"In view of the unrest that exists throughout the country, the police have received orders direct from the Czar to arrest all suspects, and your father is a victim of that order."
"How am I to know that? What proof is there?" said Flora.
"I am sorry, but no proof is forthcoming. You will have to take my word for it," replied the Prince.
"The guarantee is not sufficient."
"But I don't understand," replied the Prince. "The other day you were my betrothed, and now—"
"I was betrothed to you," put in Flora quickly, "as part of a bargain. That bargain has been broken, so I am released from my promise."
"You don't love me?" said the Prince, and there was a note of surprise in his voice.
"Love you?" retorted Flora scornfully. "Does the slave love her master to whom she is sold? It seems almost impossible to me that you can ever imagine that I loved you. The thing is too preposterous."
He laughed a little.
"A thousand curses," he retorted, his voice rising in anger. "I've had enough of this. Whether you marry me or not I care not, but you shall be mine, at any rate."
"For God's sake, Prince!" came the voice of Von Grahaun, "have pity!"
"You old dotard, I've had enough of you and your promises. I have saved your life enough from the scaffold. I have protected you from the chains and Siberia. You shall pay the penalty."
"For God's sake, Flora," came the old man's voice pleadingly, "think what you are doing. What is a marriage, after all, compared with the suffering that not only I, but all the members of our party, will have to undergo; the persecutions, the horrible cells, the mental and moral torture?"
I nudged Tony.
"Come." I said, "It is time to act. Where is the sentry?"
"Listen," said Tony, putting his month close to my ear. "The sentry is pacing up and down some yards from the door! I will go to him, as the warder I will speak to him and you must come up behind and do the business—when I cough. Do you understand?"
I nodded my reply.
He crept past the window, and then drew himself up. I followed him as far as the corner, and then waited. From within the house I heard Flora exclaim, "I refuse to sacrifice myself."
I heard an angry exclamation from Mirski. Then there was the sound of a scuffle, a cry from the old man. I heard the voice of Flora protesting bitterly.
Then more clearly I heard the voice of Tony speaking to the sentinel. I heard their feet moving about on the snow as Tony worked his man into position.
Then there came a cough.
Without thinking of the danger I crept rapidly round the corner. Another moment and I had my knee on the fellow's back, one hand on his throat and the other on his mouth. And as he fell back on me I saw Tony quickly bend forward and twist the rifle from his grasp so that he could not fire. In another second he brought the butt end crashing down on his forehead. I felt the man stop his struggles and fall back limp and apparently lifeless. Tony took a handkerchief and a tobacco pouch from his pocket, thrust the tobacco pouch as far into the man's mouth as possible, and then bound it round with a handkerchief.
"What business we've got to do we must do before he comes round," said Tony, still grasping the bayoneted rifle and with his hand on the latch of the door.
AS the door was flung open I followed close at Tony's heels, and what I saw filled me with a very tempest of anger.
On the floor, with his head near the open door, lay the senseless form of Von Grahaun, a thin stream of blood trickling from a brutal blow on the forehead. In the corner the Prince, with his back to us was struggling with Flora, trying to press his cursed lips to her face. In the struggle her hair had come loose, and fell over her shoulders and face a very cataract of gold. She was fighting gamely, but the brute had her two small hands tightly clasped in one of his huge palms, while with the other arm he was trying to drag her towards him.
But Tony soon altered the situation. In the excitement of the moment nobody seemed to have noticed the sound of the opening door; the Prince never looked round—only Flora saw us.
It was not until Tony buried the bayonet in the Prince's leg that Mirski realised our presence. If I had had the rifle I would have buried the steel in the man's heart. But for some reason or other Tony was more merciful.
With a yell of rage and pain the Prince dropped Flora's hands and turned on Tony who had just time to draw out the bayonet. Unfortunately he had only put it through the fleshy part of his leg, and though the wound must have been a nasty one it did not interfere with the activity of the Prince.
Springing to one side, he seized a chair and aimed it at Tony, who dodged only just in time. But before he could do more I had clambered across the table and flung myself straight at his throat. I don't know whether it was the instinct that still survives in us of the brute, but my own instinct on such an occasion was to go straight for the man's throat, even as the dog does. Almost naturally a man puts his hands up to tear away his antagonist's fingers, and that attitude assisted in overwhelming him. At any rate, in a moment I had him on the floor; releasing the grip of one of my hands I proceeded to beat his face, with a fury, into as unrecognisable a mass of blood and bruises as I could before Tony pulled me off.
"Don't spoil the man's beauty altogether, Hubert," he said, bending over the Prince's prostrate form with the bayonet pointing at his throat.
"If you so much as breathe till we have finished with you I'll put it through your gullet," he said.
As rapidly as we could we gagged and bound him, and at Tony's suggestion carried him out and threw him on top of the sentinel.
"When the dog wakes up," whispered Tony, in a perfect fever of excited joy, "some plunging will begin. That will finish the work you so ably began on the Prince's face. And now for the sledge!"
With that we went back to the Grahauns.
Flora was kneeling by her father's side, cooling his head with some melted snow. Von Grahaun had just come to himself, and as we returned he began to struggle into a sitting posture.
"If the old gentleman can manage it," said Tony to Flora, "we had better be moving before trouble begins."
"But how, or where?" said Flora.
"We'll be taking the Prince's sledge," said Tony, "if only Mr. Von Grahaun can pick up enough strength to move."
Von Grahaun looked up at Tony puzzled for a moment, scarcely realising where he was.
"Thank you," he said weakly, "for the trouble you have taken. I think I shall be able to walk."
And with that he struggled to his feet.
"Yes, we have to thank you, sir," said Flora, "for your opportune arrival. I don't quite understand everything just now," she said, casting a glance at Tony's uniform, "but later, no doubt, you will be able to explain everything, and I shall be able to express my thanks to you better."
I was standing behind her at the moment, and was more than annoyed to find that her words were addressed to Tony. As before, she ignored my existence utterly.
"We have no time to waste," I said, gravely, "on this sort of nonsense."
I made a movement to give my arm to Von Grahaun, but before I succeeded in my object Flora had pushed herself in front of me and taken one of her father's arms; Tony took the other, and I had to follow up in the rear, not at all pleased at the turn of events; indeed, so angry and so sorry was I at Flora's conduct that I would have willingly faced the rigours of a Russian prison once more to escape from such an irritating position.
As quickly as possible, and going in an opposite direction to that in which we had come, we skirted the front of the blockhouse and got once more into the shadow of the wall. At the end of this another wall, parallel to the front of the prison, came at right angles to it. We halted a moment while Tony went down on his hands and knees and scraped away the snow. In another moment he had produced a ladder, and, bowing to Flora, placed it up against the wall.
"Miss Von Grahaun, I'm afraid yon will have a six-foot drop on the other side, so if you will allow me to go first I shall be able to break your fall."
With that he mounted the ladder, and we heard him drop on the other side.
"You must go next," I said, looking her straight in the eyes.
She turned from me.
"Father, will you climb up and the gentleman on the other side will help you down."
Von Grahaun feebly mounted the ladder, and, when at the top, stumbled rather than dropped into Tony's arms.
Then, without another word to me, Flora followed.
I then mounted the wall, kicked the ladder from me, and landed safely on the other side. But before I dropped I looked towards the blockhouse, where the two figures lay on the snow, and suddenly into the mean light beyond the shadow of the wall there came the figure of the officer of the guard. I saw him approach the two senseless forms, but I did not wait to see more. Almost as soon as my feet touched the soft snow on the other side of the wall I heard a musket shot, which told us that the alarm had been given.
"Quick," said Tony, "we must run for it."
As quick as we could we ran across to the stable. Tony flung the doors open and we heard inside the champing of horses.
"Get the sledge out," said Tony; "the door on the left."
As quickly as I could I found the sledge house, but scarcely were the doors thrown open when Tony came up with a pair of horses, their bells jingling in the winter air.
"Confound these bells," said Tony, as he rapidly harnessed the horses in a pair. Then he returned with the leaders, and with a skill which he in common with most of his countrymen possesses, harnessed them up.
"Scramble in," he shouted, and himself seizing the reins, scarcely left us a second to scramble into our places. Indeed, such a scramble had we that I found myself sitting next to Flora, who showed visible annoyance as I stretched the fur rug round her. Not even a "thanks" rewarded me for my trouble. With just a slight turn of her shoulder she showed that my presence was an annoyance.
Tony's whip whistled out, the leaders reared and plunged, and then we began to move. We can't have gone more than ten yards from the stable door when I saw three soldiers, with their muskets up to their shoulders outlined on the top of the wall, and in another moment three bullets whistled over our heads.
"I think we are just in time," said Tony, turning to me as he lashed the horses. "At any rate, we've got the start of them."
"Yes, thank goodness," I said, "if only something would detain them for a while longer."
Scarcely had my words been spoken when, almost as if in answer to my prayer, there was a terrific report, and a glare of blinding light from the prison which lit up the whole countryside.
"What the devil's that?" said Tony, as the horses, now in a perfect paroxysm of terror, began to run like the wind.
"I don't know," I said, with a strange exultation in my voice, for at the terrific explosion I heard Flora tremble at my side. It soothed my wounded feelings to feel that she was frightened. But at Tony's question, and after I had given my answer, there suddenly sprang up into my mind the face of the little dark Frenchman in the cell; his strange words came back to me: "Keep a good heart, comrade, it will be all well to-night. I have friends."
I remembered, too, how anxiously he also had waited as the hour approached ten o'clock. Apparently his friends had come, and something had happened which, though we were too engaged to see, undoubtedly had a bomb in it. I related to Tony what I suspected.
"That's good business," he said. "I never felt myself so freely in sympathy with the Anarchists before. Their timely intervention will keep the pursuers off our track for some time, at any rate, and if only these horses were fresh I would not mind, but the Prince has driven them too hard and too fast to let them last long at this pace. Already the poor brutes are sweating too much to my liking."
For an hour, I think, we drove as furiously as possible over the blinding snow, not a word being spoken, except that now and again Tony tried to encourage the horses. But after an hour at this pace the poor animals showed evident signs of distress, and at last Tony pulled up.
"I must give the poor brutes a rest," he said. "I think we are clear of danger, and half an hour will do them a world of good."
With that he stopped the sledge and covered the horses with some rugs. I jumped out and together we paced up and down the snow, beating our chests with our hands in order to keep out the frost. Neither of us spoke. Von Grahaun, I think, was asleep, and Flora sat there in the sledge as if turned to ice.
After half an hour Tony broke the silence.
"We must be getting on," he said.
I scrambled back into my seat, and Tony was just about to mount when he stopped and put his hand to his ear. I, too, listened, and faintly across the snow I heard the tinkle, tinkle of sledge bells coming nearer and nearer.
"By heavens, they're after us," said Tony, as he sprang into his place and lashed the horses into a gallop.
TO the right and left, in front and behind, as far as I could see, was the straight, wide snow plain, cold and sharply cut against the sky line, broken every now and again by a clump of fir trees, which caught the glint of the winter moon and traced upon the surface of the snow strange patterned shadows from their branches.
I can always remember that scene, for though up to that moment our flight had found me dazed and half unconscious of the adventure in which I was engaged, the sudden approach of new danger electrified me, as it were, into wakefulness, so that I was suddenly inspired with the energy that comes to a man who newly wakes from a dream.
None of us spoke a word, but from Tony's set face and Flora's startled eyes it was clear that we all realised the danger; all, that is to say, except Von Grahaun, who still slept peacefully.
Tony lashed the horses to the top of their speed; even then, after their rest, they had not had enough to recoup them for their energies. Above the tinkle of our own bells I could hear, drawing closer and closer, the tinkle of the bells on the sleigh behind, their sound forming an almost harmonic chord with ours. I remember listening as the harmony became more pronounced, showing that they were closing in upon us at every yard.
Then, suddenly, there was a sharp report, and a bullet shrieked over our heads to the left. I looked back: the sleigh was not a thousand yards away from us and was coming up closer at every effort of the horses. Von Grahaun muttered something in his sleep, and then fell to snoring loudly. Flora never said a word, and Tony used his whip mercilessly, looking straight in front of him with a glint of excitement in his eyes.
And so for another minute or so through the winter night we sped on across the dazzling snow. I looked back at our pursuers. Standing up in the sleigh was a man with a rifle to his shoulder. Almost automatically I put out my hand and with a jerk pulled Flora down just as another bullet passed uncomfortably over our heads.
Almost angrily she shook herself free from my grasp, turning upon me a haughty, passionless glance, as if I had been guilty of a great liberty, and at that glance I almost wished that the bullet had not spent itself in the snow, but found its billet in my heart. For what was the use of this struggle for liberty and life? What was life and liberty compared to one smile, one look of regard from Flora. God knows what I had done, but something had come between us; something that made her regard me as a person not fit to breathe the same air with. Despair entered into my heart. The utter hopelessness, the utter uselessness of our struggling came upon me, weighing me down with a gloom and despair almost intolerable.
I leaned forward to Tony and plucked him by the sleeve.
"It's no use," I shouted into his ear above the plunging sound of the horse's hoofs.
"We'll put up a fight for it, anyway," he said, "that rifle is loaded."
He kicked my foot underneath the rug to show me where, at the bottom of the sleigh, he had flung the rifle that we had taken from the sentry in the prison. I bent down under the rug and took it up.
"See if you can wound one of the horses," added Tony
I stood up in the sleigh: our pursuers were not more than 400 yards from us. I brought the rifle to my shoulder. And then something prompted me to look round at Flora. She still sat there, looking coldly in front of her, a very iceberg of indifference; she didn't even deign to give me a glance. I bent over to Tony, anger against Flora in my heart and loathing for myself. The farce was played out and it was enough. Let them escape, I thought; for myself I would not sit for another moment in the sleigh with the woman that I loved more than the world itself, who repaid my regard with what was hatred of a more than ordinary sort.
Some two hundred yards in front of us I noticed a little fir wood, through which a track of snow led curving through it, so that the end of the road was hidden by the trees.
"Tony!" I shouted, balancing myself with the butt of the rifle on the floor of the sleigh, "it's no use. You get round the corner in that wood, slow down, and I will get out. I shall have a better chance to stop the horses then. You make the best of your escape. If you do get free, try to obtain audience with the Czar and get me back my passports that I told you of; and thank you old chap, for all you have done. And I say, Tony," I added, "look after her."
Before answering Tony took a swift glance over his shoulders at our pursuers, then he looked at me with a whimsical, half- defiant glance.
"Catch hold of the reins. Hubert. This is not the job for you. This is my palaver."
"No, no," I cried, with a passion that amazed even myself. "You stay here. I insist." And then more calmly I added: "It is much the best, Tony. Someone must go to the Czar. If I get free I shall be rearrested. Don't argue, for God's sake but slow up round that bend so that I can get out."
He looked at me squarely, rather puzzled, I thought. Then he nodded assent.
"All right," he muttered.
I flung the reins from me, picked my way between the sleeping Von Grahaun and Flora and stood at the edge of the sleigh. We had just entered the wood. Now we were in it, and Tony, waiting for the curve, was holding in the horses. I looked back again: gradually the track curved round. Bit by bit our pursuers disappeared, until they were completely hidden from our view.
"Good-bye, Tony," I shouted, and without a glance at Flora, dropped softly on to the snow.
"Good luck to you, Hubert," cried Tony, waving his whip in the air.
I watched the sleigh disappearing round the edge of the curve, hoping that Flora would look back, but the last sight I had of her was that she was sitting opposite the huddled form of her father—cold and impassive.
The was no time for idle thoughts, however; it was time for action, and trying to put back the sorrow and anger that was in my heart, I strode to the nearest tree and took up my position behind it, for, while it gave me a good view of the track, I was completely hidden from sight.
Fortunately, the track through the woods was very narrow, scarcely could two sleighs pass one another, and the fir tree behind which I took up my position was an old one, its trunk swelled to large proportions by the sap of years. The moonlight filtered through the trees on to the trackway, leaving the wood on either side in almost impenetrable darkness. I knew it would be pretty hard to take my aim in moonlight, as distance becomes exaggerated, and a man accustomed to the strong clear light of the sun is unable to gauge accurately a mark in the gentle light of the moon. But still fortune favoured in so far that the horses of the oncoming sleigh rushed past me within two or three feet. I must indeed be a bad shot, I thought, if I could not bring two horses down at that distance with my two cartridges. The sleigh came nearer and I began to detect the voices of the occupants. I made ready for my aim, trying to judge the height of the horses' backs.
I believe that our pursuers were rather suspicious of the wood, as they drew nearer, for as they neared the space where I was hidden they slowed down noticeably, a proceeding which was their undoing, for it made my aim absolutely certain.
As the first of the leaders came abreast of me I fired, hitting a horse on the flank, and emptied the other cartridge into the horse immediately behind. For a moment the poor animals were plunging and screaming with pain, the blood gushing from their wounds and forming a dark pool in the melted snow.
I felt a glow of exultation in my heart; at any rate, Flora and Von Grahaun and Tony were safe.
There were three occupants of the sleigh—three Officers, as far as I could judge—none of whom I could remember having seen before. The accident to their horses had happened so suddenly and unexpectedly that they were left there at a standstill, too surprised even to move. I determined to take advantage of their consternation, and, acting on the spur of the moment, stepped forward into the moonlight.
"Hands up!" I shouted in Russian. And then, as if by an inspiration, I shouted to three imaginary followers in the wood, bidding them shoot did they so much as move a muscle.
The three men stared at me, and automatically put their hands up over their heads.
I advanced towards the sleigh, I confess, with a certain amount or trepidation, for I knew they would be armed, while I, with the exception of my rifle, for which I had no cartridges, had no weapon of any kind.
Nonchalantly I threw down the rifle on to the snow; all the while the two horses I had shot were plunging and screaming with pain on the ground, and the three men stood there in the sleigh with their hands over their heads, looking at me with an astonishment that made me want to laugh.
I bowed to them, taking off my hat.
"Gentlemen, I am greatly privileged in being allowed to meet you. I am sorry that certain rules and regulations of the Society to which I have the honour to belong compel me to assure you of what I know you will regard as an unpleasant fact, but I hope you will take as little offence at it as possible, but if you put your hands down so much as an inch you will assuredly be shot dead."
They answered never a word.
I went up to one and tapped him on the shoulder.
"Will you descend, sir," I said, bowing.
Still with, his hands over his head he descended softly on to the snow. I made him face round to the wood, and then proceeded to go carefully through his pockets, annexing his revolver and the few cartridges he had left. Then, still with his face to the wood, I left him there, with the assurance of certain death if he moved a muscle. I then proceeded to deal with the other two officers in a like manner, loading their three revolvers, removing all their cartridges, and disposing this small arsenal about my clothes as well as possible, keeping, however, in one hand one of the loaded revolvers. I then remembered the rifle which had been raised to fire upon us a few minutes before. To find this I had to go down on my hands and knees, for it was stored away under one of the seats of the sleigh. It was a dangerous thing to do, for at any moment my bluff might fail, and in that stooping position they could have attacked me unarmed without any chance of escape.
Assuming a coolness which I was far from feeling, I dropped on to my knees and pulled out the rifle. Taking this together with the one I had dropped on the snow, I backed slowly towards the wood, and when out of sight hurled the rifles as far as I could. When I turned back again I could have almost exploded with laughter, for these three men were still standing there with their arms above their heads, with the fear of death in their hearts.
I took care before I stepped once more out of the wood to issue the same orders to my imaginary band, and even went so far as to reply to myself in three different voices. Then I went up to the horses, cut the traces free of the two horses I had wounded, harnessed up the unwounded leader with the remaining unwounded horse of the team, and drew them well away from the two wounded horses; then, with one of my revolvers, I put the two animals out of their misery.
Having completed this duty I turned to the three officers.
"Gentlemen," I said, "you will ascend to the sleigh. And you," I said, bowing to the one whom I had noticed driving, "will take the reins and drive to St. Petersburg."
I placed these three so that I sat behind with my revolver cocked, ready for use. They got in without a word and took their seats in the order I have mentioned.
I shouted another imaginary order. Then turning to the one who drove, I told him to be off.
The pair of horses strained at the sledge, which began to move slightly; then, the animals breaking into a free gallop, we began to speed rapidly toward the capital.
SO far not one of my three passengers had so much as spoken a word, but when we had gone, I suppose, some two or three miles, they, in their ridiculous position, crowded together in front of the sleigh, while I sat behind with a revolver in each hand, one of them turned to me, and eyeing my weapons with a very natural nervousness, said in a deep voice:
"Will monsieur excuse me if I ask a question?"
"Not at all," I answered, only too glad to have my thoughts distracted.
"It is a question," continued the man, "which Monsieur may consider somewhat strange under the circumstances."
"Not at all," I said, "please count on me for any information I can possibly give you."
The politeness of my speech and the gentle way in which I said these words evidently reassured him. I even saw the flicker of a smile play round his lips.
"Why does Monsieur go to St. Petersburg, where—" he paused as if in difficulty how to express himself, and then, with the smile deepening on his lips, he continued, "where certain little difficulties with the police are sure to arise?"
The question amused me not a little.
Here was I, having escaped from prison, having arrested my pursuers by a piece of absurd bluff, now driving directly, towards St. Petersburg, straight into the arms of the authorities. Of course it must have seemed ridiculous to these men. But how, otherwise did I stand a chance of getting back my passport or of communicating with the British authorities?
Even if I was rearrested at St. Petersburg, the chances of my ultimate release would he better than they were a week before. Then I was in the hands of Prince Mirski and the Countess, with the Secret Service Police as my custodians, both of whom were making me the tool of their private interests. One wanted me away as the supposed rival of his affections for Flora, a supposition which the very thought of brought a bitter smile to my face. The other had apparently conceived a peculiar affection for me, which all my efforts to stifle had failed. Now, however, I should come under the ordinary justice of the Russian Government of which I confess, I had not much of an opinion but I knew I should obtain a hearing and that inquiries would be set on foot concerning me, and that on stating that I was an Englishman and telling the necessary parts of my story, the British Consul would be communicated with. But how was I to explain this to these three men? It was a difficult thing to do; difficult because I should have to confess so much that did not redound to the credit of their intelligence. I gazed at my questioner so fixedly while was pondering these things in my mind, that I suddenly became aware that he was becoming rather uncomfortable. At that I determined to carry my previous line of conduct through as a skillful poker player increases his stakes upon a weak hand, and my fellow players had shown themselves very amenable to an obvious piece of bluff.
"Your question is very natural," I said, "but before I answer I must ask you certain questions. I want you clearly to understand that I am not attempting to extract the promise I am going to ask you to make by force. If you don't want to make the promise, don't make it. As far as I am concerned, it will make no difference. But I confess I shall take it as a favour if you can see your way to making the promise."
The three men turned round at this, and their surprise at this extraordinary request was plainly written on their faces; so plainly, indeed, that I could not help laughing—which somewhat reassured them, I think.
"Monsieur is not joking?" queried the one who had spoken to me before.
"Indeed I am not, as perhaps I shall be able to explain to you later."
"But you must admit," said the driver, "that the situation is somewhat curious. Here you ask us to make a promise, while, at any rate for the time being," and he looked at the revolvers, "you are able to compel us to do what you wish."
"I don't believe in promises given under compulsion," I replied. "But come," I added, "tell me, do you want to go to St. Petersburg?"
"Yes," replied the third man, who had not yet spoken. "We were on our way to St. Petersburg, and for that reason we were sent on a special mission tonight which Monsieur has interfered with."
"Indeed?" I said, non-committally, for it was clear that they did not realise that I had been one of the occupants of the sleigh which they had been pursuing.
"But, Monsieur," said the first one who had spoken, "Monsieur has not told us the promise he wishes us to make."
"Well, the promise I want you to make is this. Will you promise me that whatever happens you will drive me to St. Petersburg?"
"How can we prevent ourselves from driving Monsieur to St. Petersburg?" said the driver.
"Ah well," I said, "there are many roads to St. Petersburg: the direct route lies through various military outposts: to avoid these military outposts one has to go a long way round, but I don't want to go a long way round. All I want is to get to St. Petersburg, and I fully recognise that some difficulties may occur if I take the direct route without obtaining this promise from you gentleman."
"And when we get to St. Petersburg?" queried the driver;
"You may have a salve for your conscience," I said, "by driving me to the nearest police station on certain conditions."
"And the conditions?"
"The conditions are that you take a message from me to a friend; a message which you may read yourselves."
I could see that all three men were hopelessly bewildered at what must have seemed to them a very strange request under the circumstances. They began to whisper to each other, every now and again looking back at me as though they believed I was mad.
Then at last the driver spoke
"Of course we think your request strange under the circumstances, but on the conditions you mentioned, that we are entitled to drive you to the Prefecture of Police on our arrival in St. Petersburg, we will drive you there and take your message if we can find your friend."
I must have had some really inspired moments that night. I had intended to try and induce these men to take a message to Tony for me but it suddenly struck me that it might be useful in a more direct manner.
"What regiment do you belong to?" I said, without replying to their questions.
"The Imperial Guard," replied the driver. "I am Colonel Potemkin, my comrades are Captain Makaria and Lieutenant Zevever," he nodded to the right and left as he assigned the names to each of his companions.
"Good." I exclaimed eagerly; "you promise then—"
"Yes, we promise," they replied together.
"You swear," I said solemnly, "by all you hold most sacred that you will drive me without let or hindrance to St. Petersburg and there, having handed me over to the Prefecture of Police, you will communicate my message to the gentleman I mention?"
"We swear."
"Under these circumstances, gentlemen, as a guarantee of good faith and a proof that I place every confidence in your honour, allow me to return your weapons which I was, unfortunately, compelled to take a short while ago."
With that I handed Captain Makaria and Lieutenant Zevever their revolvers, and, having extracted the remaining revolver from my coat, I passed it to Colonel Potemkin.
I have never seen three men so surprised in my life—not only surprised, but gratified.
The Colonel turned to me and said gravely, bowing as well as he could from where he sat.
"I thank you, Monsieur, for the confidence you have placed in us. I can assure you on behalf of myself and my comrades that you will find no fault with our part of the bargain."
The others expressed themselves in a like manner, and then, as if relieved of a very uncomfortable situation, began to ply me with questions.
"Who was I? Where did I come from? Who were the rest of the band that I had left in the wood?"
I put them off for some time, answering their questions with counter-questions, eliciting from them the fact that they had been sent on special military duty in the district of the prison that I had just left, and were on their way to St. Petersburg when the news came of the Anarchist rising in the prison and the escape of three of the prisoners. As they were following the same road as the escaped prisoners, they had voluntarily accepted the duty of tracking them down, with the result that they had fallen into my hands. But I was not to put them off so easily as I thought.
Indeed, at last, in desperation, I told them the whole story.
How that I was an Englishman, who, owing to the theft of his passports and private enemies in Russia, had been arrested, and owing to the machinations of these same private enemies, had been sentenced to imprisonment at Archangel, and was on my way there when I managed to escape.
"Do you mean to say that you have only just escaped?" said the Colonel.
"That is so," I replied.
"But where, then, did you raise your company of brigands?" he asked.
"I am sorry to say, Colonel," I said with a laugh, "that there were not any brigands in that wood at all, that I was the only one there, and that I had not so much as a cartridge with which to shoot you had I wished."
"You mean to say," they exclaimed almost in chorus, "that it was all a hoax?"
I shook my head sadly. "I'm afraid it was."
For a moment I thought they were going to be angry, but the ridiculous side of the whole affair took hold of them, and instead they went off into roars of laughter.
"But it was very brave of you, Monsieur," said the Colonel. "Even if we have been victimised, for the slightest mistake on your part would naturally have meant your death. But is this story of yours about St. Petersburg quite correct Do you really want us to hand you over to the police; because, you know. Monsieur, we should not like to go out of our way to do a brave man an injury, even though he has held us up under false pretences on the road."
"It is quite true," I said, "and, moreover, I am going to tell you about the message to my friend. For what has happened, please accept my apologies; believe me that nothing but bitter necessity would have led me to inconvenience such gentlemen as yourselves."
"What about this message?" interrupted the Colonel, "and who is it to?"
"I said just now," I replied, "that I would give you a written message, but I think it would be best if I gave it verbatim."
"And the message?" said the Captain.
I thought for a moment, and then I replied.
"The message is this: 'Hubert Gascoigne, Englishman, who came in the frontier train to St. Petersburg in November, is at present at the Prefecture of Police suffering from the loss of his passport.' That is all."
They repeated it several times until they had it by heart.
"You remember it?" I said.
"Oh. yes, we have it perfectly. But you have not told us for whom the message is?"
"The message is for one with whom you have the right of an audience."
"For whom?" they said, in surprise.
"For the Czar." I replied.
I had never seen three men so taken aback in my life. It was some seconds before they recovered from their amazement.
"The Czar!" said the Colonel. "You can't be serious?"
"It is the Czar I mean, and I know I need not remind you gentlemen of your promise."
The three men looked at one another in consternation.
"Well," said the Captain, "we must keep our promise as best we can."
"Yes, we will do the best we can," echoed the Colonel.
And we went on through the night in silence.
Clearly my three ex-prisoners did not like concerning themselves with an affair which bore too political an aspect.
ALL through that day we drove, until the night died down in the dim star light, and the moonlight again shone over the endless snow plains.
It was close on ten o'clock when we arrived at St. Petersburg. Under the aegis of the three officers of the Imperial Guard no questions were asked. Now and again we were stopped by some police official, but a muttered word from the Colonel set the man at attention with his hand to the salute and we passed on.
On arriving at the Prefecture we had dismounted, and the Colonel approached me. I made sure first that we were not going to the Secret Service Bureau, where I was trapped before.
"We have now to perform, Mr. Gascoigne, the most unpleasant part of our journey. We have to give you in charge."
'"Please don't regard it as unpleasant, and allow me to apologise for the very great inconvenience I feel I must have put you to, and to thank you for the kindness with which you have dealt with me."
"And I have to thank you for the very chivalrous manner in which you have dealt with us. And I know I express the opinion of my comrades when I say that we regret this conclusion to a very pleasant trip." The Captain and the Lieutenant repeated the sentiment in other words.
I was on tenterhooks as to whether they would say anything about the fulfillment of their promise. I did not like to mention the matter again in case it should look as if I doubted their word.
Before we entered the Prefecture together, the Colonel whispered to me, "As to our promise, you can rely upon us to do our very best. We have the message, and we will repeat it viva voce, and we can do no more. But I wish we understood the reason of the why and wherefore?"
The last of his remarks were, I felt, in the nature of a question, but I carefully refrained from answering, and he carefully refrained from any further remarks which might be construed as belonging to the pumping order.
We were shown directly into the Chief of the Police, who listened to the Colonel's story—a somewhat garbled account of our real adventures. According to the Colonel, he had arrived at the prison just after the explosion, had been informed by certain officials that three prisoners had escaped in the direction in which he was driving, and had been requested by them either to shoot or arrest them—if it were possible. That he had carried out those orders to the letter, that he had wounded two of the escaped prisoners who had managed to crawl into a dense wood, and there were in all probability in their death agonies. The third prisoner—myself—they had arrested without any difficulty. In fact, according to this pleasing fiction, which did the Colonel's imaginative instinct great credit, I had voluntarily given myself up, declaring that I had escaped unwillingly, that I had been forced from the prison by my comrades, and that I had been making every effort to allow the emissaries of the law to recapture me. He stated that it might possibly be advisable—if the Chief of the Police deemed it so—to keep me in St. Petersburg two or three days in order that the fullest inquiries concerning me might be made, as he had heard certain persons who would be nameless in high court circles, mention my name, not as a criminal, but as one in whom they took an interest.
The Chief of the Police, who appeared to be on the most friendly terms with the Colonel, assured him that he would act upon his advice, and that my case should he inquired into, and that the Colonel's recommendation should have full weight.
The Chief of the Police then rang a bell, eyed me, I thought, rather coldly, and gave me in charge of three men, by whom I was removed.
My quarters on this occasion were neither so depressing nor so unhealthy as on the former occasion when I was detained in St. Petersburg. Certainly there were bars to the windows, but I had a bed and there was air in the room, and I was allowed clean sheets and even books!
The first day I spent more or less in a calm state. The second day I might just as well have been in my old cell for all the difference it made. I would dearly have loved to have broken the furniture to pieces and to have turned the legs of my bedstead into weapons with which to break down the door. If it had not been for a foreboding that the Colonel would carry out his mission shortly and effect my release, I think I should have attempted some such impossibility. As it was, a very tempest of agony surged in my brain. All the excitement of my adventures had now passed over, and I was left with the one realisation that the woman I loved hated the sight of me, and refused to have anything to do with me; in fact, if determined not to give herself to Prince Mirski, she had no intention of being the wife of Hubert Gascoigne. One moment I was cursing her, the next I was praying for her safety, and wondering what had happened after I had slipped off the sleigh that night into the snow and left her there sitting like the very incarnation of contempt and scorn.
Two days went by like this. The fourth day of my confinement I thought I should never get through. Hour after hour went by, and there came to me the first signs of incipient mania. I began to suspect my friends. I began to suspect that all Tony's sympathy was the result of his own interest, that he had only effected Flora's escape in order that he might make clear to her how mean and contemptuous a thing I was and win her for himself. I began to see in Von Grahaun's and Flora's attitude towards me since the beginning of my adventure a well thought-out scheme of using me for their own purposes, and then flinging me aside: in fact, I was fast beginning to think that everybody I knew was dishonourable or self-seeking, when I heard voices outside my cell door and the rattle of a key in the lock.
I paused in my walk, looking at the door.
Suddenly it was flung open, and three warders, armed with revolvers, bade me come out.
I obeyed with a sense of relief. Anything was a change from the monotony of that room. Somehow I noticed that the men's attitude towards me had changed. They did not treat me with the same politeness which had distinguished their conduct since the Colonel's remarks to the Chief of the Police. In fact, they hurled me rather than marched me down a long passage outside, and one fellow muttered certain words which, though I was unable to understand their meaning, I clearly grasped by the way in which they were uttered, were hostile.
A feeling of foreboding came over me. My message had miscarried. I was not to be released. Instead, I was to be treated once again as a common criminal.
I entered the room to which they took me. The first sight of the people sitting there seemed to emphasise these fears that had sprung up within my heart; for there, sitting at the end of along table, was Prince Mirski, with a bandage round his forehead; at his side no less a person than the Countess. This man appeared to wield power in every department.
As I entered the room both looked up at me, but I avoided the Countess's gaze and looked straight at the Prince, in whose eyes was written clearly and distinctly a merciless hatred.
"How do you do, Prince Mirski?" I said, with an affectation of nonchalance which, I confess, I was far from feeling.
"Silence, prisoner! If you speak without being spoken to we shall have you gagged."
"It is the only thing, Prince Mirski, that will prevent me from saying what I wish to say." I replied, "for you must remember that you are not bullying a woman now, but a man."
"Handcuff him," said Prince Mirski, springing to his feet, his cheeks flushed with anger. "He is a dangerous criminal."
The warders obeyed, not too gently: and all the time the Countess never said a word.
"Countess, this is no scene for you. I think it would be advisable for you to withdraw."
"Really?" said the Countess, for the first time looking up from the table. "You think so, Prince? Remember, I have a certain interest in this affair, and I possess an authority equal to your own in this matter. I have already told you that your arrest of this prisoner is contrary to the express wishes of His Imperial Majesty."
"I have already told you, Countess, that I never allow a woman to interfere in my business, and if it is His Imperial Majesty's wish that this prisoner—of whom he has no knowledge—shall he released, His Majesty will certainly send me an order to that effect."
"You are playing a very dangerous game, Prince."
"Oh, I know your interest in this man, Countess, but I regret that for once the interests of society deem it necessary that a decent community shall be protected from criminals. Excuse me interfering with your love affairs."
The Countess flushed crimson.
"Prince Mirski," she said, speaking in gasps, "you forget yourself."
"Perhaps madam will now see that it is advisable for her to leave me to continue my duties. Otherwise—" he put his hand out towards a bell, and held it there suspended in the act of ringing.
"Otherwise?" said the Countess haughtily.
"Otherwise"—with his hand on the bell—"I shall have to have you removed, Countess."
The door suddenly opened and two men appeared in answer to his summons.
Prince Mirski turned to the Countess.
"Countess, you will, I am sure, avoid a scene."
The Countess rose to her feet. If she had had a dagger in her hand then I know where it would have been plunged. I have never seen such anger imprinted on a woman's face before.
"Very well, Prince," she said slowly, "I go. But I warn you, again, that if any harm comes to this prisoner you will be answerable for it."
"Madam, I shall do my duty," said Prince Mirski, making a mock bow. "I wish you good-day."
He stood aside for the Countess to pass, the two men still standing by the door, which had been left open.
The Countess had got about half-way down the room when there were steps heard outside. They came nearer, they stopped at the doorway, the door was flung open, and two figures appeared.
I looked round. One I recognised as Colonel Potemkin, the other was a short little figure, muffled in a heavy military cloak that was close drawn about his face, more than half hiding it.
"'What does this intrusion mean?" said Prince Mirski, staring with anger at the two figures. "What right have you to come here?" He turned to the warders. "Turn these men out."
Colonel Potemkin motioned to the men to stand still. They seemed half disinclined to obey his orders. But looking round the room from where I stood I seemed to be watching as a sort of disinterested spectator a drama upon the stage. I saw that the Countess leaned against the wall, and that the colour had gone from her cheeks.
"I am here because I wish to be here, Prince Mirski," said the voice from under the cloak.
"Indeed," said Prince Mirski, stamping with irritation, "I have not the pleasure of your acquaintance, and I regard it as gross impertinence on your part, Colonel, and on your part— whoever you may be—to intrude yourself into business with which you have no concern."
"Indeed!" said the same voice again, in accents so cold and biting that I thought the Prince would have an apoplectic fit.
Almost with a scream he turned to the two men whom he had summoned to remove the Countess. "Turn these men out."
They closed up.
"Stand off," said the Colonel.
"Stand back," said the same voice from under the cloak. "I command it."
The warders seemed too perplexed to know what to do. As for Prince Mirski, he came tearing down the room in a fury of rage.
"Who the devil are you to give orders here? I will have you arrested. Leave this room at once or I will summon assistance to have you turned out."
"Your orders are nothing to me," replied the same cold, cutting voice. "By what right do _you_ command?"
"Who are you to dare to talk to me like that?" replied the Prince, and he stretched out his hand to tear away the hood of the cloak, but when his hand had almost touched it the hood was flung back by the little man.
Almost thunderstruck the two warders stepped back. Almost white with terror, Prince Mirski took two steps back until his hand grasped the table for support.
"The Czar!" he involuntarily gasped.
A great joy leapt into my heart.
"Ring that bell," said the Czar to the Prince.
Trembling, the Prince rang the bell. Four warders appeared.
"Have those two men locked up until I give orders for their release." He pointed to the two warders who had attempted to lay hands upon him.
"You," he said, turning to Prince Mirski, "I will deal with presently."
He strode up the room—a squat figure, I admit, but with that studied dignity which comes, I suppose, from years of practice.
He sank down on to a chair, and then, for the first time he looked up at me, and I saw a look of pain cross his face. He rested his forehead with one hand on the table, and seemed lost in thought. Then he looked up at the Colonel and summoned him to his side, and there was a look of pain in his face.
"That man—who is he?" he said, pointing to me.
The Colonel bent down to tell him my name.
A sense of relief came over him. And when I looked at him I noticed that there were almost tears in his eyes.
"Mr. Gascoigne, yes, how could I forget? Affairs of State have crowded so heavily upon me that the obligation I am under to you, Mr. Gascoigne which we need not mention," he added significantly, "had quite escaped my memory."
Then he motioned me to come to his side.
I came up still handcuffed, the three warders remaining like impassive images when I left them. He held out his hand to me to kiss.
I sank on one knee, but with my hands handcuffed as they were I could hardly keep my balance.
"I am sorry, your Majesty," I said, "but my hands are at present handcuffed."
The Czar sprang to his feet in a very fury of rage. He ordered the handcuffs to be removed, and placed the three warders under arrest.
The Colonel bent over and whispered something in His Majesty's ear.
"Ah, yes, I have a packet for you, Mr. Gascoigne, and it is my great regret that you should have suffered as I understand you have suffered, but those responsible"—he seemed to forget that he himself was responsible in the first place—"shall be punished."
He turned to Mirski.
"It is my will," he said, "that within twenty-four hours you leave here for Archangel, outside the boundaries of which you shall not go for five years. After that you return to your estates."
With that last order all the energy seemed to have left him. He sank back in his chair lost in a reverie while we stood there minute after minute.
Then suddenly he rose to his feet.
He bowed distantly to me, and without noticing anybody else in the room, strode out, followed by the Colonel.
I followed, stepping as closely upon the Imperial footsteps as possible determined to go out under the aegis of the Imperial will, so that nothing further should prevent me from reaching the British Embassy.
Outside was a squadron of cavalry of the Imperial Guard. The Czar got into his carriage, the Colonel mounted his horse, with a friendly salute to myself, and then the cortege moved off, and I was standing outside the prison with my packet of passports in my hand, the loss of which had cost me so much.
THE sense of freedom was delightful, the meaner sense, also, of having got the better of my enemies—especially Prince Mirski--added to the joyousness of my release. I determined to go back to my hotel, have a wash and a shave and a change of clothes, that I was badly in need of, and then make my long postponed visit to the British Embassy. Fortunately I had still another day to run before I was officially due, so that the intervention of the Czar seemed likely not only to have saved me from imprisonment but also from ruining my professional career. I hailed a drozhki, and telling the man where to drive, jumped in.
We had gone, I suppose, about a hundred yards when I became aware of a closed carriage that was following us. At first, it was mere languid curiosity that made me half turn back in my seat, but suddenly it came to me that the carriage really was following my vehicle. In order to test it. I told the driver to drive down certain streets which led out of the direct route to my hotel; the coachman behind immediately whipped up his horses and followed. So used had I became during these last eventful weeks to imprisonment that, fearful lest something should again intervene, to prevent my fulfilling my engagement at the Embassy, I told the coach-man to whip his horses up to a gallop. The coachman behind did the same. But my attention was soon distracted from the episode by the scenes in the streets through which we were driving; here it was very evident that something of a very unusual sort was going on. All the people were walking or hurrying in one direction, just as a crowd collects in London when they catch sight of three policemen's helmets together.
It soon became clear that the crowd were converging into one of the squares.
My driver had to slow his horses down, the crowd was becoming so thick that it was impossible to proceed at anything more than a walking pace, and the man himself, looking round at me with many grunts and grumbles, protested that this was no place for a respectable, law-abiding drozhki-owner—or words to that effect.
Hesitating whether to turn round and drive back again or remain and see it through, I noticed a sudden sensation of mingled reverence and anticipation among the crowd. All eyes were turned in one direction, and from that direction, walking as though he were a man inspired, was a young looking priest, whose form and features were strangely familiar to me. I tried hard to recall them, and I knew that they were in some way associated with one of the most eventful periods of my life. Where had I seen that earnest face and those bright, soulful eyes? As the man came towards my carriage and people in looks rather than words resented the presence of my drozhki blocking the path, it suddenly occurred to me. This was the man in the railway carriage, the constitutional agitator, the man of peace, whom the Agent-Provocateur had vainly endeavoured to incite to crime.
That fateful and fatal spirit of interference with other people's affairs, which is my evil genius in life, once more took possession of me. Just as I had got myself into this jungle of difficulties by allowing myself to be lured into that ridiculous Society in Paris, so I determined without a moment's thought to follow this incident to the end.
Jumping out of the drozhki I threw the driver a coin which about doubled his legal fare, and advised him to clear out of the way. I noticed for the first time now that the other carriage was in a similar predicament to my own, and by a strange coincidence both driver and occupant had apparently come to the same conclusion as ourselves. The driver was at this moment engineering his horse towards a side street, and just as they were disappearing round the corner a female figure tripped lightly out onto the pavement. It was hardly a suitable place for a lady, I thought, and, still in a meddling mood, I would have pushed my way towards her to advise her to return to her carriage, but the crowd had become so thick on the appearance of the priest that I simply had to yield to its pressure, and was carried along in the very thick of the congregation.
Whatever might be my ultimate fate, I was in no immediate danger from my newly-found neighbours. They were all quiet, unarmed people, tramping along with docile hope as of children going in a body to ask a favour at the hands of some lord or master. The scene almost carried me back to the days of the "Harvest Homes," when the workpeople on my father's estate used to come to the old Hall with requests for the old-fashioned privileges, which the governor always granted them as a matter of course but insisted on their seeking in the old feudal fashion.
As I was borne along I overheard scraps of their conversation, and I gathered what their mission was in their despair, these confiding peasants were going to lay their trouble before the "Little Father." Town life had not killed their rural simplicity; they believed if they could only meet the Czar and tell him how they suffered all would be well with them. This was no revolutionary mob. They were obviously the outcome of this Society to which Von Grahaun and my cousin Tony had directed their efforts. But I was inclined to think, as we tramped through the streets, that the time was coming before very many minutes, when a little more of Tony's fire and a little less of Von Grahaun's scientific Socialism would better befit the occasion. Evidently Tony's fear had been realised. In his absence the organisation had been imperfect, and, as he predicted, it was bursting into action before it was ready.
It was fortunate for me, perhaps, that they were such a docile crowd. My views on social and political questions at home I have already expressed, but out here my sympathies were all with the people. Had it been an armed mob I should have borrowed something to hit with. As it was I could only pity their weakness and allow myself to be swept on with them in their hopeless mission.
How hopeless it was I knew better than any other man on earth- -except the two monarchs whose conference I had witnessed in that secluded German wood. I knew all too well that the Czar, with every good intention in the world, would never meet his people. Wavering between two fears, he would choose the lesser. On the one side was the fear of a general uprising, in which the liberty-loving peoples of the world might come to the assistance of his outraged subjects; on the other side the terrible knowledge that his footsteps were being dogged by enemies from within, who would construe every act of justice into an act of weakness. I knew how much he feared the latter when I remembered that even the contemptuous jeers of the Kaiser did not goad him into open revolt. Even now, as I shambled on in the middle of this weird crowd, I could remember well his frightened tones as he replied to his brother monarch's rhetorical declaration of independence in which the Emperor of the Federated States talked of his ministers as his servants, while the hunted autocrat had to admit that they were his masters. The German Eagle could not rescue the Russian Eagle from the perils of his own nest, but he had pledged his word to defend him from the consequences of defying the flocks of small birds without.
I am afflicted with such a burning desire to communicate my conclusions to others that occasionally I express the tail-end of my thoughts aloud, and the habit has so grown on me that I am not too particular as to whom I address. And I involuntarily muttered almost into the ear of a silent, aristocratic-looking man who was trudging alone beside me:
"He will never be allowed to come."
The man turned suddenly round and in a sharp voice asked:
"What do you know about it?"
At first I was inclined to think this was the angry rebuke of a fanatic who hated to be told the unpleasant truth, but there was something in the man's manner as I carefully scrutinised him that told me I was not talking to an ordinary peasant. Again I had an impression that the fellow had crossed my path at some eventful period. These fitful appearances of strangers associated with the past were becoming quite too complicated to be endurable. Where had I seen the man, and what on earth had he to do with me? He did not give me time to think this out, but coming still closer, he again asked "What do you know?"
"Possibly I know more than you know," I replied, evasively
He looked at me as steadily as the lurching crowd permitted, and then said in a low whisper "If you know as much as I know you are unfortunate."
This was enigmatical enough, and it suddenly occurred to me that if only two of us worked together we might yet save this confiding crowd from marching on to its destruction.
"Is it not our duty to warn these people?" I said. "'Do you yourself really think their mission is likely to have the slightest effect?"
"It will," he said, "it will have the effect of sending many of them to their graves, with you and I, my friend, among the number, it may be. But it will have the further effect of rousing the whole of Christendom in such a spirit of wrathful resentment that the inevitable end will come sooner than any of us have yet imagined."
"You know then that the Czar will never meet them?"
"I know he dare not. It is his daily wish and prayer to be at peace with his people, but he is surrounded by such a stone-wall of bureaucracy that he will be dashed to pieces if ever he hurls himself against it. His own mother, in her anxiety to save him personally, is politically his greatest opponent, and there are women as hopelessly and helplessly in her power as—"
We were separated by the crowd, but as the man was swept from my side I caught, one glimpse of his white face. There were tears in his eyes, and I knew there was a hidden tragedy in the story he had been trying to tell me.
And then I remembered in an instant where I had seen the man before. This was the waiter whose whispered words had so terrified the Countess on the night I had captured from her those papers which proved to be forgeries.
And now there was a halting of the crowd. The men in front of us had pulled up suddenly and we were jerked backwards like a string of trucks on a railway when the engine pulls sharply up.
I had long been separated from the priest for whom the people had made a lane, my newly-found friend the waiter was nowhere to be seen, and crushed in the centre of a wavering little mob, detached slightly from the rest by an obstructing drozhki, which the driver had deserted in terror, I was unable to see exactly what was going on among the main body. A confused babel of yells and shrieks arose in the distance, and with blanched cheeks my immediate neighbours murmured in terrified tones: "The Cossacks!"
Nearer and nearer came the shouts and yells. My companions huddled themselves in a frightened mass in the shelter of the drozhki, and fighting my way out from among them I clambered on the top of the vehicle. As I did so the soldiers swept past, scattering the people in all directions, trampling them under the hoofs of their horses, treating the defenceless people as though they were so many wild beasts.
As the analogy crossed my mind it found an echo in a protesting voice a few yards off.
"Are you men or tigers?" said an elderly gentleman, shielding as well as he could an old man who had fallen under the feet of the horses. For answer a huge Cossack turned in the saddle, and with one blow cut the protesting man down, riding on with his spurs to his horse in pursuit of another little crowd of fleeing men.
Leaping off the drozhki, I forced my way towards the prostrate bleeding gentleman as he fell. I recognised him in a moment. It was Von Grahaun.
I bent over him and brought such rough knowledge of field surgery as I possessed into action, but even to my lay intelligence it was evident that nothing could be done for him. The cowardly blow had practically severed his head from his body. He died without a word. The wealthy man, with too great a wealth of heart and sympathy, had died in defence of the poor and the oppressed—a hero in the cause for which the world knew no reward.
As I knelt with my arm around his shoulder, a man bent over me and whispered, "What did I say, my friend?"
I looked up, and my eyes met those of the mysterious waiter. I was about to ask him what could be done, when he interpreted my thoughts.
"We want to get your friend's body away," he said.
I nodded, and bending down, we crossed his hands with mine behind the old man's back. Lifting the dead form gently, we moved off in the direction indicated by the waiter. We passed up a narrow opening, then into a smaller street, and finally arrived at a house where there was no crowd and no soldiers. The waiter opened the door, and together we laid the lifeless form of Von Grahaun on a simple couch in a neatly furnished room.
Not till then did the waiter speak again, and then, looking me full in the face, he asked, "Who are you, and to what group do you belong?"
"I am a friend and distant relative of this unhappy gentleman," I said: "beyond that I know nothing. You, I have no doubt, are a fellow-conspirator of his. I do not use the word offensively, but you understand what I mean. You will, therefore, possibly have some idea as to the whereabouts of his daughter."
"His daughter? Good God, yes! What does this mean for her! She must be told. I must bring her to him—dead though he be. Wait you till I come back and if any person comes in say nothing but 'Time is on our side.'"
This was exactly what Tony had told us on the road to Siberia. I was picking up the initial outpost phraseology of the order, and would soon be knowing far more about it than was healthy for a high official of a friendly Government.
However, this was not a time for drawing back. I sat down at the far end of the couch after covering up the dead man's face reverently, and waited with fear and trembling for the harrowing scene which must, I supposed, be witnessed.
Apparently the house was empty; there was a stillness about it in keeping with the depressing occasion. I had been led into one of those houses where the "reformers" met, and they had all gone forth into the street, many of them, perchance, never to return, unless they came back like poor old Von Grahaun.
As I sat there, resting his chin on the palm of my hand, my soliloquy was overshadowed by a tall figure, which noiselessly appeared at the open doorway.
"He would not be warned; but, thank God, you are safe."
I bounded from my feet like a man suddenly awakened from a dream. There stood the Countess, pointing sorrowfully at Von Grahaun.
"You here—" I was about to say "fiend," but I remembered that she had stood my friend when last we met, and, moreover, she was in one of those subdued moods which always attracted my sympathy rather than my resentment.
"I am here," she repeated. "I saw you thrust yourself into danger, and, escaping from the crowd myself, I followed you here. Your friends have deserted the house, and they are cunning enough to leave everything open when they have nothing to conceal."
This, then, explained her noiseless entrance. The Society, I began to realise, made a point of courting publicity when they were not actually in conference.
It was an awkward moment. Was I never to be done with this woman? I could not bully her, and nothing short of physical force seemed likely to prevail with her.
A deliverance came sooner than I expected.
"Prepare yourself, my poor girl. Have courage."
The Countess withdrew her lustrous eyes from me at the sound of this voice and looked about her like a hunted tigress.
Before either she or I could decide on any action, Flora Von Grahaun stood beside her in the doorway. With an icy look, the girl passed on and went towards the couch. The waiter, beckoning me into the passage, quietly closed the door.
"This is too public," he said, in a low voice to me and then turned resolutely towards the Countess, who had already moved towards the outer door.
"A moment," he said. "I have something to say to you."
THE Countess shuddered as he put his hand on her shoulder and turned towards him with a look of fury, which gradually melted into one of desperate appeal.
The man pushed open the door of a adjoining room, and, bowing toward it, motioned her to enter.
"Not now. Not now!" she murmured, softly.
"Now," he said, again bowing, and pointing to the open door, "will you have the goodness to enter? Do as I command you."
Still she hesitated. Her bosom heaved, her breath came and went in frightened gasps, and, with her beautifully chiselled nostrils distended, she drew herself up with one last desperate effort at outraged dignity.
"You command me?" she repeated imperiously.
"Yes, I command. I should have commanded long ago. Remember, madam, I am your husband."
Never had I suspected the Countess capable of such submission. Dropping her proud head, she walked slowly into the room, and her husband followed her.
Now I realised why this waiter had such an attraction for me. I knew I had seen those intellectual features in some other connection. He was not a Frenchman then, after all. It is remarkable what a difference a wig and beard will make to a man. But then while Count Blaveski, as I knew him in the old days, was a fair, handsome man of the true type of the North Russian nobility, this person was dark and sallow.
"I presume I need not throw off my disguise or clean my face and restore the bloom to my cheeks?" I heard him say to the Countess.
She did not answer, but paced the room like a panther in a trap.
"You know me, I see. You knew me, of course, that night when I whispered in your ear a warning which, I hear, you have despised. Olga, there are many things of which I know you to be capable, but I thought you retained sufficient pride to show yourself some respect. The women of your house have at least observed their vows."
Still I could hear her walking up and down the room. The Count had left the door open, and the situation was extremely awkward for me. On the one side of the passage was Flora, whose vigil with the dead was too sacred a thing for me to interrupt, especially in view of the unhappy circumstances. That wretched Countess appeared to be sent by unkind fate to prey upon me whenever Flora came in sight. Explanations I knew to be useless at this point, and if my position towards Flora was awkward, how much more so was it towards the people on the other side of the passage. I am told that there are men in the world who rather pride themselves in the possession of a power to make other men jealous. But I would have given a good deal to miss this scene between a man whom I respected and a woman for whom I had lost even ordinary toleration. I knew nothing of the house. I could not well go out of it and leave Flora alone. Here I was stuck in this passage in the most clumsy and altogether distasteful position I have ever been in my life. The last sentence uttered by the Count made it pretty evident that he was going to talk to his wife about me. I wondered if he knew what my position was, or was it fair to myself that I should at once explain? He saved me further worry on that particular point when he again addressed his wife.
"Not only are you false to your vows, but you have so far lost your womanhood as to thrust your love on a man who has neither asked it nor shown himself willing to accept it."
This taunt must have stung the woman out of her submissive silence.
"What is that to you?" she said. "How do you know that? And why do you accuse me of breaking my vows? May not a widow be as free as a maid?"
"A widow, yes; but not a woman who knows she is still a wife. It was because I wished to spare you possible humiliation in your own eyes that I revealed myself to you that night in the hotel. Up to that point I had nothing to complain of. I would not interfere even now, but that I know you are inflicting a cruel wrong upon a brave and honest girl. Olga, the world little knew when you and I were the pride of our friends at the Russian Court, what a great gulf was fixed between us. Equal in birth and rank, each of us young, well favoured by fortune, and with the world before us, how speedily did we discover that each was leading a different life. My shame when I knew my wife was a Court spy, not because of the needs of genteel poverty, but for the sheer desire to intrigue, was only equalled perhaps by your dismay when you discovered that your husband was a friend of freedom. You were of the Dowager's party, the party of retrograde government and impossible bureaucracy. I was of the young Emperor's party, his devoted servant, his loyal friend, hoping and believing that by our united efforts we might deliver this land we love from the perils that beset her, and by wise generosity surround our young ruler with a bodyguard created of the people's love and gratitude."
The Countess halted and threw herself in a chair with badly affected nonchalance.
"Oh, yes," the Count went on, "I know the impatience with which you people regard our schemes. It bores you to think that it is possible to treat this long-suffering Russian peasantry as men and women with natural ambitions, but I was proof against even that."
Up to now he had been speaking in a cold voice of stern dignity, but his tones softened, and he walked slowly towards the Countess. Putting his hand on the back of the chair he leaned over as though tempted even now to clasp her in his arms.
"Olga," he said, "do you remember that fateful night after the reception at the Winter Palace, when I offered to renounce my rank and prospects, when I implored you on my bended knees to quit the country with me, to go to England, or anywhere, and live together with only our love to guide us? It was a little thing I asked of you, Olga. To a man the sacrifice of political ambition meant much; to a woman, whose first and last thought in life should be home and love, it was surely no unnatural thing to give up a life of intrigue for a husband whom you professed to love. But why do I talk of these things now? It is too late, too late."
"Too late, yes," said the Countess, jumping up and facing her husband. "Why do you come into my life again with these recitals of things that have been? You chose your own course, you made your own compact with me, why did you not abide by it?"
"I did abide by it. I told you that I would go out of your life for ever, that you might imagine me dead, and the world believed me so. I disappeared in that avalanche of destruction in the Siberian snows, but you must have known that what the world believed was untrue. When Ivan Blaveski was spoken of as a man who had been, you knew full well that somewhere in civilisation he lived under another name, and in that life sometimes posed as a studious hermit, sometimes as a traveller in search of scientific discovery, and finally, as you know, as a waiter in a hotel, a position which I took up because I wanted to be near you. I have lived in the fond hope that some day you would relent, that you would summon me to your side and say, 'Ivan, we will live for one another.' Olga, tell me, as you value your soul—if soul you have left—did you ever love me?"
"No."
The word was spoken coldly, and cruelly, and without the slightest hesitation.
I could have strangled the woman for her brutality, but in a moment or two I thought I was doing her some injustice.
"Trained in my narrow sphere," she went on, "I admired your manly presence, I honoured your proud name, I was interested in your cultured ways, and to most women of our rank all this passes as love. Heaven has blessed or cursed me with a nature that demands something more. I discovered too late that real love to me is something for which a woman will sacrifice her body and soul, something which knows no pride nor even ambition; something which will not be repelled; an all-absorbing and all-mastering passion that is its own religion, its own god, its own heaven. You are a good man, Ivan; I have never questioned that. But had you been a fiend incarnate it would have mattered little had I loved you. I should have been your slave till death."
"And I yours." said the Count sadly. "Fate has willed it otherwise. I pity you, Olga, but I still must do my duty. You know that you have deceived, wickedly deceived, that defenceless girl in the next room. If your love for this Englishman be what you describe you must be protected against yourself and others must be protected against your unholy passion. I leave you now for I have other work to do, but I shall be near you, and I warn you that unless Hubert Gascoigne and Flora Von Grahaun be permitted to leave this city without molestation, and unless you cease your efforts to tear them apart I shall exert that influence which you know I still possess, and, risking all, I shall announce that Countess Blaveski is not a widow."
He left the room, and, as he passed me, he held out his hand, frankly.
I took it without a word. There was no need of speech between us. We understood each other, and in that silent grasp we expressed ourselves as man to man.
And what was to be done now? My own position was none the less awkward. Left to herself. I could hear the Countess sobbing in the next room. I had no desire to talk to her, and I had an unhappy suspicion that the woman in the other room had no desire to talk to me.
Still, something must be done, and I began to wish that one or two of the interesting persons associated with the house would return. If not, I must make an inspection of the place and see whether anything could be found to help me.
I turned to go up the stairs, when once more the door was opened without warning, and my heart jumped with joy as I wheeled round and faced my cousin Tony. Here was the one man who knew what to do under any circumstances.
"A sad business this, dear boy," he said in a tone marvellously subdued for him. "Our friend sent me along, and the rest to be done, I suppose, is to arrange for giving the poor old man a decent funeral. As a Scotchman by descent he would have superstitious notions about being buried in his old home, a feeling which you dull Saxons cannot understand. And there is the girl to be looked after. She must be got home at once."
"No, not home; at least, not to his German home," I said quickly.
Tony looked at me with a sympathetic smile at the corners of his mouth.
"Yes, I rather gathered you would be saying that; but you seem to be having rotten luck in that quarter to now, old chap. Where is the lady? Still with her father?"
I nodded and pointed to the closed door.
"Well, she mustn't brood there," said Tony. "This day's work has done great things for freedom, but, as I feared the cloud has burst too soon. The untutored faddists weren't ready, and I am afraid their particular mission is at an end. I must convince your friend Flora that she can do no more good by remaining here. The whole thing will have to begin over again with new people and new methods. We have shown our hand and we can do little more.
"For Miss Grahaun to remain any longer in St. Petersburg now that her father is dead would be worse than useless. She must be got out of this. Hubert, my boy, you know my personal opinion of the agents of law and order in general, but this is a case where they may serve some good purpose. You will have to work the miracle through your blessed Embassy, and the German Ambassador or your own—whichever thinks he is entitled most to the job— will have to claim the body of old Von Grahaun and demand a safe passage for his daughter. You can tell them that the old gentleman was here on a course of scientific study, or that he had brought his daughter here for the benefit of her health, or some other yarn. We pay your trade enough to be able to claim an artistic lie out of them now and again, and they ought to be good at the business with so much practice. Now just you scoot off and put your people on the track while I proceed to get this place in something like the shape of an ordinary citizen's dwelling place, into which we have brought the body by mere chance. To do the thing properly you had better insist on an apology from the Russian Government for the mistake of their officers. They'll say the old gentleman ought to have kept indoors instead of indulging his curiosity, or they may have some sort of evidence that he is in at the business, but just you keep the bluff up until we're all safe out of the country. Now, then, don't waste time; you'd better leave her to me in the meantime."
This last sentence was in response to a longing look of mine towards the room where Flora sat with her father. I realised the force of Tony's advice, and, assuring him that I would be as speedy as possible, moved towards the door. At that moment it was burst open.
"Yes, this is the place; I'm sure it is. I tracked them here, and they cannot have departed."
Four men stood in the passage, and one of them, despite a heavy disguise, I recognised by his voice to be my old friend the Anarchist. Our relations in the earlier part of our acquaintance were not cordial, but being companions in misfortune alters one's views considerably of one's associates, and I was not at all perturbed at meeting him again.
"I am glad to see you alive and well," I said cordially, "and I only hope we may never meet again under circumstances similar to those when we last saw each other."
I was speedily undeceived. Instead of grasping my outstretched hand, the little man pointed scornfully at me, and, haranguing his three companions, said:
"This is the hideous monster, the treacherous beast who wormed his way into my confidence and then betrayed me. But for him our attack upon the prison on the road to Archangel would have been entirely successful. To save his own skin he told the authorities, and just before the explosion occurred I was removed in safer custody, where I remained, closely guarded while others escaped."
"You are entirely wrong and mistaken," I said. "I fought my own way out with my friend, and would have helped you rather than hinder you."
"They all say that afterwards," he said, bitterly. "Our friends are many when we are safe, and our betrayers are always the first to profess their sympathies. But I know you, Hubert Gascoigne, from the very night when you first obtained admission to our council in Paris by a trick. You have shielded those who deserved our vengeance, you have frustrated our plans at every point, and I will make sure of you this time."
He had been speaking with his right hand nervously playing with his open vest, a trick which he had when he was excited.
I was just laughing at the fellow's heroics and about to tell him not to be a fool, when from the open door Countess Blaveski threw herself upon me. I put my hand round her to lift her gently away, my fingers became frightfully hot, and lifting my hand suddenly I was horror-stricken to see them covered with blood. Tony pushed his way past us with a cry of indignant rage, but we had sufficiently impeded him to prevent his reaching the man. They went out of the door in a bunch and slammed it after them. Tony pulled at it, but did not see for a minute or so that while the conversation was going on, one of them had skilfully manipulated the latch so that when the door banged it was fast.
Abandoning all hope of catching them up, my cousin turned to my assistance. We carried the Countess back to the room where her husband left her. The small, keen stiletto which we plucked from between her shoulders told its own tale. She had overheard our conversation with the anarchists, and, coming to the door, had seen what I had stupidly failed to notice. The man must have raised his hand to strike me to the heart just as she flung herself between us.
With what skill we could muster between us we staunched the bleeding, but the Countess turned her beautiful eyes towards me piteously.
"It is of no avail," she said. "Such men strike to kill. No skill in Europe can save me, no skill would have saved you had I not been in time."
Tony, who had been most things in his short life and had gone through a course of surgical training at Dublin, shook his head despondently. He could not contradict the Countess, and she became perceptibly weaker almost every breath.
"The girl!" she whispered, pointing to the opposite door. "I wish to speak to the girl. I must see her. Bring her to me."
We hesitated a moment. Could Flora do any good, and had she not seen enough horror for one day? Our doubt, however, was solved by Flora, herself. She had heard the turmoil, and came out to see what was the matter. As she looked into the room, the Countess beckoned her to her side with such an appealing look that, despite all that had passed, the noble-hearted girl rushed forward, and with her delicate fingers proceeded to make the dying woman more comfortable than we clumsy men had been able to do.
"Is there nothing we can do?" she asked, tremulously.
"No, nothing. Do not attempt it. Time is precious," murmured the wounded Countess. "There is much to be told, much to be done. Flora Von Grahaun," she added, drawing the girl's face close to hers, and looking into her eyes with piercing earnestness, "you love Hubert Gascoigne!"
I watched them closely. A disclaimer was on Flora's lips, but she blushed and halted in her speech.
"You love Hubert Gascoigne," replied the Countess, her bright, black eyes still fixed in one glittering stare. "You cannot deceive a dying woman. You love him and listen—"
She drew the girl's face still closer to her own, and in a hoarse whisper, broken by short, painful gasps for breath, she went on: "When I told you he loved me, I lied. I loved him, loved him so much that it is reward enough for me to die for him, and I loved him so much that I poisoned your mind against him. What I told you was not true. Forgive me! forgive me!"
"As I hope to be forgiven," said Flora, pressing her lips to the Countess's.
With this kiss of mercy there came a look of womanly tenderness on the statuesque face of the beautiful creature. There was a spring of Christian gentleness in her; but only in this, her last dying hour had it been probed. In the haunts of fashion, in the realms of diplomacy, in the glitter and glamour of Court life, it had lain dormant. But the sympathy of a true woman in that generous kiss had brought it into life.
She passed away with a peaceful smile on her classic features. She went to her Great Account, a sinner, but still a martyr; and as I stood silently by when she breathed her last, I bowed my head in reverence.
Whatever her faults, she had given her life for me.
"I DON'T want to seem to be bustling things at this solemn moment, old chap, but there is increasing need every minute for the intervention of somebody in authority This lady is a woman of rank and position; she is murdered in this house, and it strikes me we are in a pretty bad way. In a very short time we shall all be in the hands of the Police."
"The Police!" How that word terrified in this country. The experiences of my prison life, the hideous nightmare from which I hoped I might have awakened, might be repeated again, and good heavens, Flora might even be suspected. There were people who knew that the relations between these two women were far from cordial; there was in fact, sufficient circumstantial evidence to send us all once more to Siberia or to the gallows. In point of fact Flora was a fugitive from justice.
Tony's idea about the Embassy began to look less plausible the more it was examined. There would have to be official statements and trials, and all the red-tapeism with which I was only too well acquainted. Meantime, anything might happen, and even if Flora were not utterly broken in spirit before the end, there was always the horrible possibility that her own Government, which must be German, would not regard her position in the same light as we saw it.
These fears I communicated to Tony in a hurried whisper, drawing him aside from Flora, who was busying herself with some little marks of respect in the presence of death.
My cousin's optimism fell as he listened to my argument, and his cheery face assumed a very troubled and unusually careworn look. For once in a way, he was in a difficulty, and the more he pondered over it the less he appeared to like it. Pulling out his pipe and filling it with many thumps and stabs of his thumb and forefinger, he sat in a corner of the stairs, and puffed away like an Indian brave in council.
All of a sudden he crammed his pipe, still lighted, into his waistcoat pocket, and slapping me on the shoulder with a blow that sent the breath out of my body, he whispered:
"You must bolt for it."
"But how? I am due at the Embassy."
"To the divil with the Embassy. You'll have to leave that to me or settle up when you get back to England. There's no help for it, my dear boy, you must be off within an hour. You've got your passports all right this time."
"Yes; but Flora?"
"Exactly. That was my trouble all along, or I should have had you off long before this. They'll be particularly strict on the frontiers just now, but man, we're a pair of dunderheads not to have tumbled to this before. In the course of these scraps of conversation which one has been bound to overhear between you and your friends, I have gathered that this lamented lady in the next room is one of those aristocrats in the Secret Service."
"How does that help us?"
"My dear Hubert, you see without observing. Did you not on one occasion travel with this lady when all the passengers were examined by the Secret Service officers, and did you not notice that she displayed not an ordinary passport made out in her own name, but a token which the police accepted without questioning?"
"Now you come to speak of it," I replied, "she didn't produce anything at all. The officers possibly took her appearance into account. She met them in the passage, and was about to show them her papers, when they waved her aside, and took no further notice of her. No other passenger but myself noticed it."
"And you appear to have noticed it with your eyes shut. Of course, she was supposed by the other passengers to have exhibited her credentials, but the police had far too much sense to make a show of it. They only wanted to see the corner of it; a public examination would spoil the whole thing. In fact, what you supposed to be papers, were not papers at all. Did you see anything remarkable about the palms of her hands?"
"Well, now I come to think of it, I did notice that one of her gloves fitted rather clumsily, or else she was carrying something in it like the girls at home carry their pennies."
"Exactly, you thick-headed Anglo-Saxon; and if you had looked closer, you would have seen exhibited in the little oval opening above the button just sufficient to satisfy any official. It was on that she went through, and not on the papers you supposed her to be proffering them."
"All this is very interesting, but how does it help us?"
"Help us! You bullet-headed John Bull. Don't you see that the woman would never travel without this same token? She would always have it on her in case of accidents, and there is therefore, in this very house, and at this very moment, that which will see Flora Von Grahaun safely out of Russia."
"Flora to impersonate the Countess? Impossible."
Although I had forgiven the woman, I shrank from this sacrilege. I could not even in such an extremity ask Flora to assume her character.
"Dear me, shall we ever get brains into the heads of you people at all, at all? Do you suppose there is not more than one woman in the Secret Service? Wake up, man, and don't stand there arguing, and wondering if it's right, like a curate at a Fair. You explain—no—you'd muddle it. I will explain."
With that, he took Flora in hand, and to my relief and his exultation, she saw the point a great deal quicker than I did.
Naturally, however, she declined at first to leave her father lying there.
"Trust me," said Tony enthusiastically, "I'll see that he gets the prettiest wake—" He pulled himself up suddenly. This was not a very comforting assurance to the theological product of a combination of John Knox and Martin Luther, but he was off again as reassuring as over. "I will see that everything is done decently and in order. Indeed, the dear old gentleman's bones shall rest with his ancestors, or I will forfeit my life in the undertaking. Now evening is coming on, and it is just the time to act. You must be off tonight, by the night mail across the continent, and get to sea as quickly as you can—on an English boat for choice. That is the one thing Hubert's moribund country is of some use for. You are safe in her keeping when you are on the water. Now we'll leave you in this room for awhile, and you will search for the thing you want. Come along, Hubert, and make an effort to look respectable."
I washed myself, and borrowed a huge fur coat which Tony unearthed from one of the cupboards.
There was one drawback—the money. The coin I had given to the driver of my drozhki had exhausted my resources. In fact, I remembered now that my principal reason in going to my hotel was to make arrangements for a supply of ready money.
"It's no good. Tony," I said, shaking my head, "I shall have to go to the Embassy before I start."
"You'll just have to do nothing of the kind. You'll spoil the whole thing if you do. You mustn't waste a single minute."
"But I haven't any money."
"Man, that's the most artistic thing I've heard you say for a long time. As I never have any money myself, I have the greatest contempt for you comfortable beings, who are always in such vulgar possession of funds; but bedad, in this particular case, it is a bit of misfortune. But, money or no money, we have to get you off within the next hour."
At this instant Flora came out of the next room. She held in her hand a little silver disc, bearing the Royal Crest, with some hieroglyphics engraved upon it. It was like a half-crown, and was embedded in a dainty little case.
"This is the only thing I could find," she said.
"And find enough it is," replied Tony. "Take it out of its case, show it but for half an instant to any official in Russia, and you are free to go and do exactly what you please. We've tried to make counterfeits, but we've never succeeded; for, faith, the thing is so well guarded that I've never laid hands on the real thing before. Now we're got so far, Hubert, we're not going to stop for a paltry bit of money."
"I've got a little in my possession," said Flora, quietly. "My father always made me carry enough to take me back home."
This was cheery, but not cheerful enough for me. I did not choose that Flora should go alone even armed as she was: there were dangers ahead to be encountered.
Tony saw my difficulty, and promptly came to the rescue.
"What will take one into the wilds of South Germany will take two to Berlin," he said, "and once you are there, you will be able to raise more. At all events, get out of Russia whatever you do, and trust to luck after. Make for England—the pair of you if you can. It is a dirty little country enough, but it's about as good a place as you could got to—barring Ireland."
With more time, and under different circumstances, Flora and I would have been embarrassed. The situation was still extremely awkward, and what had taken place at the death of the Countess had left us in a very difficult way for showing each other the mere formalities of fellow-passengers.
Tony knew this as well as I did, and he had sense enough not to give us time to think.
He hurried us out of the house in the now darkening night, and never left us, chattering on all sorts of subjects, until we stood on the footboard of the night mail from St Petersburg.
Heavily cloaked. Flora escaped observation until we were actually in the carriage. A lynx-eyed officer on the platform noticed that she was without luggage—an occurrence so unusual in a lady with apparent rank and position on a through train, that he stepped forward as though to question her.
I never regarded Flora as a strategist, but I suppose woman's wit guides her in most things. Gently resting her cheek on her gloved hand, she displayed through the opening in the glove, the corner of the token she had taken off the Countess. I do not suppose anybody saw it but the police officer and myself. He only looked at it for just one instant and then wheeled about without a word. Flora covered her hand with her face, and said nothing until we were well started on our journey.
"I have engaged a sleeping compartment for you," I said, rather awkwardly. I hardly knew yet whether to treat her as a fellow-passenger only, or to endeavour to recall our old time friendship.
She smiled wearily as she thanked me, and moved off, leaving me to while away the time as best my misery would let me. What a lifetime it had been since I came to St. Petersburg, and what had the future in store for me?
Sleep was impossible for me, and little occurred to vary the weary monotony of the journey to Berlin. As I handed Flora out of the train, a suspicion crossed my mind that she treated this as the end of our journey. I knew she had friends in the German capital, and it was only natural she should go to them. As for myself, there was only one thing for it: I must go to the British Embassy, and make a clean breast of it. I was well enough received there, and with my position and credentials, had no difficulty in securing plenty of money to take both of us to England.
"And I think," one of my chiefs remarked to me, with an indulgent smile, "the Service, after your stirring adventures, can well spare you for a little while. Continental work is just a little exciting at the moment; and a young man with your special knowledge will be more useful at home."
They never say too much to you in the diplomatic service. I know I was to be kept out of harm's way, and out of the way of doing harm. This was not the best thing that might have happened under some circumstances, but my main thought at the moment was Flora. The Service might go to the dogs, so that I had time and opportunity to guard her.
Taking a good, comfortable night to sleep over it, I made my way next day to the house where Flora was a guest, well knowing that I should be sure of, at least, a welcome from her hosts, who were mutual friends of my family.
Flora was winsome, and friendly, but no more. Her maidenly modesty, instead of responding to the appeal of the Countess, was only shocked by the thought that I knew the Countess had discussed me with her. So much I perceived from her manner, although, as she received me with her friends, the conversation was entirely general. Not till I was about to leave did I venture to ask when she proposed to continue her journey.
"Our friends have been good enough to suggest that I should remain here for a few days," she said, "and then I propose travelling home."
"Home!" I repeated mechanically.
"Yes, home; home to my father's house."
I stumbled out into the street with my brain in a whirl. Was this to be the end of it all? After the trials and dangers we had endured, after Flora's passive confession to the Countess, were we to part here in the middle of Europe, she to go her way, I to go mine. And how could I prevent it? Her own destiny was in her own hands. I went back to my hotel, waited till evening, and then tried hard to lose myself in a German opera, but everything pointed to one conclusion, every singer sang the same message; I was a baffled man. Fate had delivered me out of physical dangers, only to taunt me with this last cruel gibe.
The following morning I turned up again at the Embassy in a vague sort of notion that there might, by chance, be some letters there for me. On the very steps of the place I ran against my cousin Tony, spruced up with quite Continental smartness. He had been enquiring for me, and expected to find me gone.
"Sure, you're slow for a young man, so you are. Why are you not in England?"
"For the same reason as you are not in Russia—because I am in Berlin," I replied sulkily.
The genial Irishman looked me up and down, and getting his shaven lips into a note of exclamation, whistled softly to himself.
"There is something wrong here," he said. "Now, tell me the whole truth, and as sure as there's genius in the Green Island, I'll get you out of it. I've seen you through far too many things to let the fun spoil at this stage. But first let me tell you what has happened in St Petersburg. I waited on a scientific person who foregathered in life with old Von Grahaun, and I put the case to him with as much poetry as I could, about the native soil. He didn't quite appreciate the native soil, being a man of science and not of sentiment; but he did see the chance for a pretty little experiment. In about 24 hours he had got the dear old boy tucked up as comfortable as any mummy at the British Museum, and I've got him in a box that not a single soul could suspect There was some trouble about getting out of the country. We didn't know whether to treat him as merchandise, or as precious stones, or what; but anyway, we've got him today aboard a boat that's going to Leith, and I'm just slipping along there to meet him, so that he may be buried like a Christian."
"Leith! But, my dear fellow, his home is in South Germany."
"Yes; but how do you suppose we would have got over the frontier, past the Customs. In Leith he will be all right, whether dutiable or not. They'd never send respectable bones back to be buried in these heathen parts. Besides, if he's a Scotchman, he'll have to go to rest in Scotland."
"He's a German, I tell you; but of Scottish descent."
"That's good enough for me. If he's got Scottish blood in him or Irish blood in him, he'll never consent to rest in any other country."
"And the Countess?"
"That's the most exciting part of the story. When I'd got Von Grahaun safely off, I just left the place to be raided by the police, making sure to put one or two suspicious circumstances in their way. They found the dead woman with the stiletto beside her, and they tracked it to that little blackguard De Risque, who will never trouble you any more, now they've got their finger on him. I thought it was possible they might like to hear my evidence, which would only delay the proceedings, so I just scooted off to an outside station, and boarded the midnight mail, and here I am, on the top of the morning.
"And now for your own story. What are you doing hanging about here, anyway?"
"Flora insists on going back to her father's house."
"And you? What do you insist. Sure, you're a slow, faint- hearted sort of lover, anyway. You're a decent man in a fight, too. A fellow who can use a foil ought to be more successful with women."
"Oh, it's easy to talk like that, Tony, but you can't carry a woman off like that in these degenerate days."
"Faith, and it would he a reflection on the intellect of mankind if you could. But if you'd a grain of Celtic brains in your head, you'd know you can force a woman into believing your own sweet way is hers. Miss Von Grahaun has got to be in Scotland, for the sake of proper respect to the land of her ancestors, and you've got to take her to England. Oh faith no; as I seem to have you both in leading strings like the wayward children that you are, I'll take her myself so I will."
With that, he was off, and left me standing on the steps of the Embassy.
WE stood on the dock of a neat little boat that glided over the North Sea. It was a quiet voyage, too quiet to be interesting, so Tony said, as he left us at the bow of a ship to go below for a cigar. The other passengers were listening to an impromptu concert in the quaint little deck drawing-room at the top of the stairs. It was too cold an evening for the average traveller, but Flora had little heart for music, and I felt I must have air.
Wrapped in a fur coat. I sat there watching her pretty profile in the moonlight, and once or twice asked her if I should fetch her another wrap. She shook her head sadly; her cloak was protection enough from the north breeze, and she looked in front of her into the dim distance, through which we were swiftly, silently ploughing.
"We are nearing land and freedom—the land your father loved so well, Flora, and where his bones will rest. Can you return to your lonely German home while he lies there?"
She opened her lips as though to speak, but turned her face away, and I saw a tear glisten in her soft, blue eyes. Her hand was resting on the taffrail, and I slowly clasped it in mine. She did not resent it; she did not return the pressure; she sat there weeping, still looking silently at the foaming waves, as the prow of the vessel cast them aside.
I thought I understood what was passing in her mind, and I did not seek to molest her thoughts. Still, I held her hand in mine, and my heart began to beat faster as she gently turned her head towards me. And then at last I found my tongue.
"Flora, there is a weird, a tragic story of a foolish young man, who sought adventure, and only too late discovered the consequence of his folly. It would help to pass the time if I tell you how it happened, and how he discovered that he had endangered the life of a woman whose only hope of safety rested with prompt and self-sacrificing action by him."
Suppressing names, I then recounted briefly what had happened to me in Paris, and what brought me to the forest with the Countess Blaveski. As I tried to minimise my own dangers, I saw her look at me, once or twice, with an admiration that set my blood dancing through my veins, and gathering eloquence as I went along, I left the Countess and her fortunes out of my tale, and told of the sufferings of a man who was misunderstood, to whom life seemed hopeless, and whose punishment was greater than he could bear.
Still holding her hand as I talked, I felt her dainty fingers gradually grasping mine with responsive sympathy.
"But let us talk of ourselves," I went on, moving closer to her. "Flora, when you have paid your last tribute of respect to your father, when you stand alone in the world by his open grave in the land of his sires, which way will you turn? There is a home waiting for you in England, a man who loves you, who lives for you, whose life without you will be a hideous blank. Will you go with him, or will you retrace your steps, and in other lands, seek out a home which he may not share?"
Her face was still averted, but I could see her trembling lips forming an answer. I felt like the suppliant who thinks he has not sufficiently pleaded his cause, and cannot rest his chances on the hazard of a calm response.
"Flora," I cried, drawing her arm round my neck, and clasping her desperately in my own, "where will you make your home?"
Her head fell submissively on my shoulder, and she whispered softly in my ear "In England with you!"