CHAPTER XVHOW PAUL DIED
The lady addressed as countess came forward with the lamp, and the little party moved towards the ante-chamber—for such it was—Wilfrid himself opening the door.
The Duchess, as if claiming precedence, was the first to enter, and Wilfrid noticed that as she passed the threshold she looked downwards, seemingly careful as to where she stepped.
Wilfrid followed. The Countess and Alexis stood by the door, and as before, beyond earshot.
The chamber was one that had no exit save the door by which they had entered. As in the other apartment every window had been walled up. A plain camp bed in the middle showed that the place had been used as a sleeping-chamber. The rest of the furniture was of the simplest kind, quite in keeping with the bed.
“You are treading,” said the Duchess, solemnly, “where, after to-morrow, the foot of man will never tread again.”
“Then this is——?”
“The death-chamber of the Czar Paul.”
Then did Wilfrid remember that it is a usage in the Russian Court on the death of a Czar to wall in the windows and to seal the doors of his private apartments, a process which, if repeatedly carried on, must in course of time expel the living Czar from the palace of his ancestors.
“To-morrow will be too late,” had been Alexis’ argument for inducing Wilfrid to accompany him. A true remark, if applied to the seeing of this chamber, but wherein lay the necessity for his seeing it?
“Yes, Paul died here,” said the Duchess. “But whydo I say ‘died?’ That is not the word. Died! They do well to shut the light from this room! Let there be perpetual darkness; it will be a fitting symbol of—of the work done here. If these walls could speak!”
She was silent for a moment, and then turning to Wilfrid with eyes that spoke of an inward horror, she said,
“Do you know how Paul died?”
“Your words lead me to suspect the official account that he died of apoplexy?”
“It is false—false!” she cried with a vehemence that surprised Wilfrid. “Paul was murdered in this very chamber—cruelly and barbarously murdered. And they that did the deed still live. Live, do I say? They are the Czar’s ministers, highest in the State, honoured of all men! And Paul’s physicians are not ashamed to sign lying proclamations that he died of apoplexy; they are posted all over the city. And editors print the story, and people believe it—all save a few, and these dare not open their mouths, for it is a crime against the State to speak the truth. It is only in Russia that such things can be.”
Overcome by emotion she sank down upon a chair by the bedside. Wilfrid thought she was going to faint, and made a sign for the Countess to come forward. Her help, however, was not required.
“Whence did you learn this?” asked Wilfrid.
“From one who, till his dying day, will be haunted by the memory of the deed—from Prince Ouvaroff.”
“Will not your Highness tell me the story?”
“It is the will of the Empress that youshouldbe told it.”
Wilfrid could not help wondering why Paul’s widow should honour him, of all persons in the world, with this confidence, seeing that, only two days before, he had given dire offence to her husband. Doubtless he would receive an explanation ere long of a circumstance that at present was altogether inexplicable.
Pausing for a time before she began her narrative, and often pausing after shehadbegun, the Duchess proceededto describe Paul’s death, one of the grimmest stories in the annals of Czardom.
Two nights before—to tell the tale more connectedly than it was told by the Duchess—upon the stroke of eleven, twenty cloaked men presented themselves at one of the gates of the palace. They were the ministers, relatives, and friends of the Czar, among them being Count Pahlen, the chief of the conspiracy; General Benningsen, a savage when roused to anger; and Prince Ouvaroff, a patriot actuated by the best and purest of motives.
The soldier on guard permitted them to pass, never suspecting that treason lurked beneath those brilliant uniforms and the decorations that attested rank and dignity. Once within the palace they silently ascended to the Emperor’s apartments.
On guard before the bedroom door stood Lieutenant Voronetz. Guessing their errand, he shouted “Treason!” and, faithful to his trust, he drew his sabre, though well knowing that resistance meant death.
“We have no quarrel with you,” said Benningsen. “Stand aside from that door! You will not? Well, then, if you prefer to die——”
A dozen blades were stabbing and slashing at Voronetz; his hand was hewn off; mutilated and moaning he fell.
The door was fastened on the inside; a violent kick burst it open, and in rushed the conspirators.
The Czar was not to be seen.
“He cannot have fled far,” said Benningsen. “His bed is still warm. Ah! Yon screen!”
From behind the screen there stepped a little figure clad only in a dressing-gown.
The conspirators, about to rush forward, checked themselves. There was in the figure a certain air of dignity that awed them in spite of their resolve. However insignificant in person, he was nevertheless the Czar, descendant of a long line of Czars, only son of the great Catharine, and nearest in blood to the mighty Peter himself. His picture hung in a million homes; tyrant though he were, ten million persons would weepif hurt befell the Little Father; ten million voices would demand vengeance upon the slayers!
Appalled at the magnitude of their intended deed some of the conspirators shrank back, and with averted faces stole towards the door.
But the master-spirit of the scene, Benningsen, intercepted them with drawn sabre.
“No weakness, or I slay you.”
The figure spoke.
“By whose authority do you come here thus?”
“By the authority of the Czar Alexander.”
Paul’s eye flashed.
“Alexander is not Czar.”
“He will be when—you have signed this,” said Benningsen, holding forth a paper. “’Tis your act of abdication.”
“I will never abdicate!”
“Sign!” said Benningsen, menacing the Czar with his sabre.
Paul defied them. As often as they repeated their demand so often did he refuse. At last he seemed to yield.
“Give me the paper.”
The document was handed to him. He rent it to fragments and tossed them at their feet.
The smile of triumph accompanying the act provoked Benningsen to fury; in a moment of forgetfulness he smote Paul upon the face. Too late he realised what he had done.
“I have struck the Czar! We are all lost—if he does not die!”
The conspirators shuddered; there was now no retreat.
Flinging himself upon the Czar, Benningsen brought him to the floor. Emboldened by his example the others crowded around. There was a flash of steel.
“Hold!” cried Benningsen. “No bloodshed. No disfiguring mark on the body. A sash, some one!”
Paul, not realising till that moment that resistance might end in death, suddenly lost courage. His words were no longer threatening, but supplicatory.
“Spare—me—I will—abdicate—!”
He could get out the words in gasps only. Benningsen’s great hand was pressing upon his windpipe.
“Too late! Will no one lend a hand?” said Benningsen, for the Czar was making desperate efforts to fling his adversary off. “Must I do the work alone?”
Several knelt and pinned the struggling Paul to the floor. Benningsen rose, and directed their movements. A sash was slipped loosely round the Czar’s throat, but in his deadly agony he succeeded in getting his left hand through the noose, and drew it across his chin.
“Give me time—for God’s sake—a minute only—to say a prayer!”
His misty glance, wandering around in search of pity, suddenly fell upon Prince Ouvaroff, who, with a troubled look on his face, had come forward, bent, even at the cost of his life, on making an attempt to stay the deed.
“Ouvaroff—my own son!—among these men!—will you see your father—murdered?”
The Prince, his mind absolutely frozen with horror at this sudden and unlooked for revelation—a revelation that he felt to be true—stared with ghastly look at the Czar. The assassins, in the surprise of the moment, stopped in their work. Then the Prince, with a wild laugh like that of a man who has suddenly become insane, swayed feebly forward and fell senseless.
“I didn’t know we had a woman among us,” laughed Benningsen. “Good Lord!” he continued, apostrophising the struggling Czar, “did ever man yell so?”
He set the sole of his great boot upon the mouth of the victim; the heel slipped between the jaws of the Czar, who bit with such fury that the teeth penetrated the leather and entered the flesh. With a snarl of pain Benningsen withdrew his foot. Till his dying day he carried on his heel the mark left by the Czar.
They got the noose around his neck at last, and two men, one on each side, tugged at the loose ends. The work was hard and long; fully ten minutes passed before they rose from their knees.
And now that the deed was over their courage fell again, and they stared at one another in a sort of stupor. There would be a tribunal to face, namely, the nation, and what would it say to this deed of darkness?
Benningsen still maintained his hardihood, at least outwardly.
“Who’d have thought the little ape had so much life in him?” he sneered, looking down upon the body. “We have damaged him a little. But some paint and the doctor’s art will soon make him presentable to the public. You are all witnesses that he died of apoplexy.”
As they stole from the dimly-lighted chamber leaving Ouvaroff to awaken beside the body of his murdered Sire, they caught the faint moaning of the prostrate Voronetz.
“A lad of brave spirit!” commented Benningsen. “’Tis a pity he should die. We’ll send Dr. Wylie to him to see whether he can be mended. But he’ll have to hold his peace.”
Making their way to another quarter of the now alarmed palace the ministers sought the chamber where the two Grand Dukes, Alexander and Constantine, were confined—under sentence of death, so it was believed—and setting the two brothers free gave them an account of their father’sexecution, seeking to pacify their grief and indignation by the argument, doubtless a true one, that since Paul would not sign the abdication, no alternative was left but killing. For let them but retire from his bed-chamber, and Paul would at once have called upon his guard to slaughter them; and, having now learned that his two sons were parties to the conspiracy, he would doubtless have included them in the slaughter. It was Alexander’s death or Paul’s, and they chose it should be Paul’s.
“And thus,” said the Duchess, concluding her story, “thus did Paul die. His body lies in state in St. George’s Hall. A solemn mass is chanted twice a day—and twice a day the murderers bend in prayer beside the bier! The mockery of it! Does God sleep that such things can be?”
The Duchess’s narration, correct in the main, as thehistorian can testify, set Wilfrid’s nerves a-quivering with a variety of emotions. Horror was followed by indignation, and indignation by loathing. The deed itself was black enough in all conscience, but blacker still were the cowardice, the hypocrisy, the lying employed to conceal it.
“In England,” he remarked, “these assassins would be swinging. In Russia they are ministers. Truly, Alexander the Amiable merits his name. Heisamiable—very—towards his fathers’ murderers!”
The Duchess seemed to resent this disparagement of Alexander.
“Consider his position,” she answered. “Is he to begin his reign by degrading the men who have put him on the throne? They who slew one Czar may slay another.”
“And can a man die better than in the attempt to avenge his father’s murder? If fear of the assassin’s dagger keeps Alexander from doing an act of justice then have the Russians a Czar, but scarcely a hero.”
“You are bold, sir, in the absence of Alexander.”
“Nay, I would say the same in his presence.”
And the Duchess did not doubt it when she remembered how Wilfrid had faced the fiery Paul—nay, had half-drawn his sword upon him.
Wilfrid ventured at this point to remind the Duchess of an earlier remark of hers.
“You said, I think, that the Empress had a work for me to do?”
“True. The Empress, well knowing your character, appeals to you to do what the boldest in St. Petersburg would shrink from doing, namely, to make known to the world the truth respecting Paul’s death.”
“I am indeed honoured, but in doing her will I shall be trenching on the Czar’s ground. It is his duty, not mine.”
“The Czar remains silent from a mistaken sense of honour. Looking upon Paul’s death as a regrettable accident, Alexander would deem it a breach of faith on his part were he to denounce those with whom he was equally a conspirator. He had pledged his written wordthat the ministers should retain office. That word he will not break. But he must be made to break it. And the Empress sees but one way. There is something greater than even the power of a Czar, and that is, the will of a united people. Why do the ministers conceal their crime? Because they fear the people. Let the millions of Russia learn how Paul came by his end, and there will arise a flood of indignation strong enough to sweep the ministers from power. But that day will not come till a man be found bold enough to proclaim the truth.”
“And does the Empress invitemeto be the avenger of that Czar who, for no fault at all, would have had me knouted to death?”
“Yes, for she judges that Lord Courtenay is too noble to refuse an act of justice to a fallen foe.”
“Humph!” said Wilfrid, immensely flattered; “is Alexander a party to this scheme?”
“No. It is of the Empress’s own devising.”
“She leaves it to an Englishman to teach her son his duty?”
The Duchess winced.
“How hard you are on Alexander!”
He was, and that because he wished to disillusion her of her idea that Alexander was a hero. “Women are all alike,” he thought; by “women” meaning the Duchess and Pauline. “A crown dazzles them. A king can do no wrong.”
“Has her majesty,” he continued aloud, “any plan for me, or am I left to follow my own devices?”
“In view of the peril attendant upon the enterprise—for those who slew a Czar may not hesitate to slay the man who publishes their crime—the Empress has thought of a plan that can be carried out with secrecy, and yet with effect. What you did once, the Empress bids you do again.”
The Duchess proceeded to make clear her meaning by words spoken in a subdued key. The communication, whatever its nature, caused Wilfrid’s eyes to brighten and his lips to take a smile as of coming triumph. He accepted the office, not so much because justice requiredit or the Empress wished it, as because he saw that success would give pleasure to the Duchess.
“You understand, now,” continued she, “why the Empress has summoned you to this death-chamber. It is needful that you should see it with your own eyes, and to-morrow would have been too late.”
“Not a feature of it has escaped me,” said Wilfrid. And, indeed, he was confident that if he should live for a century the aspect of the little bedroom would never fade from his mind.
“Besides the ministers,” she continued, “there are others to be made a mark for public hatred.”
“Among them being——?”
“Pauline de Vaucluse.”
Wilfrid turned upon her a look of wonder.
“The Baroness was not with the assassins.”
“In spirit she was. She was the very soul of the plot. The conspirators, aiming as they thought for a better Government, were in reality dupes, ministering to her selfish and wicked ends.”
Wilfrid frowned. Selfish and wicked? He did not like to hear such terms in connection with Pauline, whose character he thought he understood much better than did the Duchess.
“I fail to see what she has personally gained by Paul’s death.”
“Her reward, so she hopes, is yet to come.”
The Duchess, as she spoke, compressed her lips with an air which plainly said that the reward, whatever it might be, would not come ifshecould prevent it.
“I greatly fear,” said Wilfrid, taking a decisive stand, “that even were I persuaded that Pauline de Vaucluse was the wickedest of all the conspirators, I could not treat her in the way you suggest.”
“Why, you must love her!”
Her tone implied pitying scorn for any one who could be captivated by a Pauline de Vaucluse.
“My sentiment toward the Baroness is not love, but friendship. Caring nothing for Paul’s anger she rescued me from the hands of his soldiers. Shall I then requiteher good deed by holding her up to the people’s hate? No, I cannot do that, your Highness.”
“She ran no risk. It suited her to play the heroine, knowing that Paul was to die that same night. But I speak to deaf ears, I see.” And then abruptly changing the subject, she added:—
“Lord Courtenay, the Empress bids you ask a reward for your coming service.”
It somewhat piqued Wilfrid to think that the Empress should hold him as one incapable of doing a just and generous deed without hope of payment. She was forgetting that he was an Englishman, and a Courtenay.
“Ah, yes! my reward,” he murmured, wondering what answer to make. Then, all in a moment, a romantic and daring idea suggested itself.
“The reward I claim—nay, insist upon—is one that the Empress cannot give. It must come from you.”
“Fromme?” she said, in a tone that somehow thrilled Wilfrid to the heart.
“It is that if I succeed in deposing the Ministry, you will give me——”
“What?” as he hesitated.
“A kiss.”
Strange that it cost Wilfrid a greater effort to say these two little words than it did to face the fiery Paul.
But the Duchess!
First she drew a sharp breath; then she started back, in her eyes a look of anger so deep that it made Wilfrid almost regret his bold request.
“Do you think because Catharine has reigned that there is no modesty left in Russia?”
“How can I think that, your Highness, when I look upon you?”
“Ask, instead, for fifty thousand roubles; you shall have them.”
“I prefer something more precious.”
“You—prefer—a—kiss—to—fifty—thousand—roubles!” she said, pausing in surprise between each word.
“If the kiss come from you.”
“It shall never come,” she said breathlessly.
“Your highness, ’tis yours to refuse; ’tis mine also.”
“You mean that you will decline the Empress’s wish.”
Wilfrid’s grim smile implied that he would; and at this the Duchess’s face assumed a look of dismay, for she knew Wilfrid to be the only man qualified for the task required of him.
“Why do you ask this—this silly thing?” she faltered.
“That I may return home with the knowledge that I have kissed the fairest lady in Russia.”
There was silence for a brief interval, during which the Duchess seemed to become reconciled to the enormity of being kissed.
“And nothing but a kiss will content you?”
“I will add a second condition; you must at the same time tell me your name, your rank, your history, and how it happened that I could save your life, as you say I did, and yet retain no remembrance of the event.”
“To gain my ends I must consent to your humour. Thus then do I pledge my word. Rid the Czar of his wicked Ministry, and”—her eyes drooped, and a beautiful colour stole over her cheek—“and ... you ... shall ... take ... a ... kiss ... from ... me.”
“Pardon me. There must be no taking on my part. The kiss must be freely given by you.”
“You are a hard taskmaster,” she smiled. “Well, it shall be as you wish.”