CHAPTER XXVIWITHOUT A MEMORY!
While Pauline repaired to the Princess’s chamber, the doctor went off to Wilfrid’s room to acquaint him with the strange news.
Being new to mental phenomena of this sort, Wilfrid received the announcement with every token of unbelief.
“Do you mean to say,” he asked in amazement, “that she cannot tell how she came to be in the Neva?”
“Has no recollection whatever of the event. Her mind is a complete blank as to her past: cannot recall the name of a friend or the name of any place where she has dwelt.”
“In what mood is she. Sad?”
“Not at all. Smiles at her own perplexity—in fact, her loss of memory seems rather to amuse her.”
“And how long is this state likely to last?”
Beauvais shrugged his shoulders.
“One cannot say. A week: a month: a year. Perhaps for the rest of her life.”
“And you have no idea who she is?”
“Not in the least; nor has the Baroness. Am I justified in supposing from your agitation last night that she is the lady that set you and the Czar at feud?”
Wilfrid replied that such was the case.
“Ah! Then of course you give up all thoughts of this duel?”
“Honour calls me to it.”
“But the lady’s safety calls you from it. Now that, thanks to your uncle, the name of the Czar’s opponent is known to Count Panine, your appearance in St. Petersburg will be instantly followed by your arrest and deportation to the frontier. In such case what help can you give the lady, should her enemies discover that sheis still alive? Her state calls for a protector, and your past relations with her entitle you to assume that rôle.”
This way of putting the case modified Wilfrid’s views, and—“Postponed indefinitely,” became his decision on the question of the duel.
The Princess’s loss of memory filled Wilfrid with extreme disquietude. When he last saw her she had been in a vein bordering upon love; this new state of mind on her part would now cause her to be ignorant of his very existence. He would have to begin his love-making all over again, and might—fail!
He breakfasted with the doctor, who, the meal ended, paid another visit to his patient, returning almost immediately with the good news that she was strong enough to be up and dressed.
So, as soon as word came that the Princess’s toilet was completed, Wilfrid sought her presence.
Attired in a dainty sarafan of soft muslin, supplied from Pauline’s wardrobe, she was reclining in a deepfauteuilwith the Baroness by her side.
Although she had occupied so large a space in his mind Wilfrid had seen her but four times, and, by a singular coincidence, at night only. Her beauty underwent no diminution by day; on the contrary it seemed to be enhanced by the soft morning light. Her delicate pallor was the only evidence of her recent grapple with death.
It was the same Marie, and yet different. The pensive melancholy hitherto marking her aspect had vanished; a new and happier light glanced from her eyes; the passing of her memory seemed to have brought with it the passing of sorrow.
As Wilfrid recalled the bitter language which the Princess had applied to Pauline, it was with a somewhat odd feeling that he now beheld the two conversing with the familiarity of old friends. It was difficult to believe that the sudden return of the Princess’s memory would be accompanied by hostility to Pauline again.
A slight movement on his part caused the Princess to lift her head and look at him.
It was with a sense of disappointment that Wilfrid mether calm, quiet gaze. He had been fondly hoping that whomsoever else she might have forgotten she could not have forgottenhim. But alas! her dark blue eyes betrayed no sign of recognition; their expression was simply one of curiosity to know who he was. Her manner differed in nothing from that of a woman meeting with a stranger, a manner that Wilfrid felt to be genuine on her part, and not assumed.
“This is the Lord Courtenay of whom I have been speaking,” said Pauline.
Wilfrid bowed gravely. That he should need an introduction to her!
“I am sorry,” smiled the Princess, “at having to meet you in the present circumstances. You must think me a very stupid person not to be able to recall my name and history; yet so it is. Try as I will I cannot carry my memory farther back than this morning. That I awoke a few hours ago in a certain bedroom of this castle is all I know of myself. Unless I have dropped ready-made from the skies I must have lived for twenty years and more, and yet of this long time I can remember nothing! Is it not absurd?”
So absurd that she broke out into a laugh; and one more sweet and silvery never rippled from woman’s lips, at least in Wilfrid’s opinion.
“The Baroness has been telling me that you can perhaps help to revive my memory, as you have seen me amid other surroundings.”
“You have been known to me as the Princess Marie.”
“Yes, but on looking into the Court Register,” she answered, pointing to a book at her feet, “we cannot discover that there is a Princess Marie.”
“Whose suggestion was the Court Register?” asked Beauvais, who had accompanied Wilfrid to the presence of the Princess.
“Mine!” answered Marie.
The doctor tapped his forehead significantly at Wilfrid to intimate that, however defective her power of remembering might be, that of reasoning remained intact. Indeed, but for her own confession no one would ever have supposed that any faculty of her mind lay dormant.
Princess Marie was now all eagerness to know on what occasions she and Wilfrid had met, a request that put him in a somewhat embarrassing situation. Was she to be told, for example, that he had once spent an hour in her bedroom?—that she had kissed him at their last meeting? and that she had always expressed enmity towards Pauline?
He looked at Pauline for guidance, who in turn looked at the doctor, while the Princess herself looked from one to another, wondering why there should be such hesitation in telling her a plain story.
“It will be as well,” said Beauvais, addressing Wilfrid, “to tell all you know, while the Princess follows you in mind, striving to recall the situations in which your story places her. Such effort will perhaps stimulate her memory.”
So spoke the hypocrite, hoping that her efforts would do nothing of the sort.
After a moment’s reflection Wilfrid proceeded to relate not all, but as much as he thought needful, for the Princess to know; and it was with a strange sensation of pleasure that he found her eyes fastened on him with a wistful attention, that never once wavered during his recital. Leaving out Baranoff and his infamous proposal Wilfrid began with the bedroom incident; then went on to tell how he had been requested by her to paint his now historic picture, saying nothing, however, as to the reward he had demanded; and coming finally to the masquerade, he led Marie to suppose that the meeting was merely a formal one on her part to thank him for his services. As for the Czar and his presumed aim towards her, Wilfrid suppressed this part of the story altogether.
“How long ago is it since this fête in the Sumaroff Gardens?” she asked.
“Only two nights ago.”
“Only two nights ago!” she repeated with breathless incredulity. “And I have no recollection whatever of it!”
She closed her eyes, knitted her brows thoughtfully, pressed her forefinger hard upon her forehead, evidentlymaking a strong effort to recall the past, but could not succeed.
She was silent for a few minutes, pondering her mental state, which was not only inexplicable to her, but also to Beauvais, the student of psychology. For, observe the contradictory nature of the case: her struggle in the water had formed a dividing-line in her history; over this dividing-line she was able to bring into her new life all, or most, of the knowledge acquired in the old, and yet she was unable to bring with it the knowledge of her own personality. Why her mind, able to retain so much of the past, should become an absolute blank upon one point—there was the mystery that humbled, nay, frightened her. Better for her to lose, say, her knowledge of languages or of music, than to lose the knowledge of herself. A gulf seemed to separate her from her three companions; they could carrytheirminds back to childhood’s days; for her life began with that morning only. Her previous history lay hidden behind a black curtain. A native from the planet Mars, new-dropped upon the earth, could not have felt less at home than did Princess Marie at that moment.
“What is this that has come upon me?” she murmured with fear in her voice. “If I lose my memory, what is to prevent me from losing my reason?”
“Now you are distressing yourself unnecessarily,” said the doctor, cheerily. “Why did I ply you this morning with so many questions upon this, that and the other topic, but to ascertain whether there is any ground for what you fear. And the result? My dear lady, if all the heads in the Czar’s cabinet were half as sound as yours, Russia would be well governed. Your mind is perfectly sane, have no fear upon that point. As to your loss of memory—humph! I’ll call it a misfortune, to please you. But there are many persons, Prince Ouvaroff for example, who would be glad to obtain an oblivion as complete as yours. Patience, my good lady, patience. Time will restore your memory.”
These optimistic remarks, and many more of the same sort from Beauvais, combined with Pauline’s caresses,gradually brought the distressed Princess to a calmer state.
“I am justly punished,” she said with a sad smile, addressing Wilfrid. “I have so long kept my name a secret from you that it is now a secret from myself. And you say I was found last night lying insensible upon the shores of this island? How did I come there?”
Pauline and the doctor could both have answered this question more fully than Wilfrid, but for reasons of their own they chose to be silent, leaving him to tell as much as he knew of the matter. To his story Marie listened with a troubled air.
“Have I enemies so malignant that they seek to murder me?”
“It would seem so,” replied Wilfrid, adding for her consolation, “but since they must now look upon you as dead they will molest you no more.”
“It is not for me,” said Pauline, “to dictate your course of action, but in view of the recent attempt upon your life, you will do well to remain in hiding here, for a few days at least, until we learn what is best to be done. In the meantime you must look upon the castle and the isle as your own.”
A proposal that found a warm seconder in Wilfrid, who foresaw the facilities it would afford him for pushing his suit with the Princess.
So it was settled that she should stay at Runö.
Now, although Marie’s companions were three in number, it was to Wilfrid principally that her remarks were addressed, and Pauline and the doctor, well pleased to have it so, presently withdrew to another part of the room, and had a littletête-à-têteon their own account.
“Our plan promises to work smoothly,” said Beauvais. “She favours him as much in the new state as in the old.”
“Yes, but how long can we keep her here in concealment? She has now been absent from the palace for more than a day. By this time the Czar’s agents must be swarming everywhere on the look-out for her. Not a spot, not a house, in and around St. Petersburg will remain unvisited.”
“We must keep them from visiting Runö,” said Beauvais.
“How can it be done?”
“Very easily. Will not Count Baranoff and his brother Loris, Chief of the Secret Police, have the direction of this affair? And have we not in our possession a letter containing matter enough to hang them ten times over? We must go at once to St. Petersburg and make this compact with them, that unless they are prepared to do our bidding we shall reveal their guilt to the Czar. And our bidding is that they instruct their subordinates to let this island alone. We need not shrink from stating the reason. Has it not been Baranoff’s aim to make yonder pair fall in love with each other? What are we doing but pursuing the same plan, though for a different reason? Freed from the intrusion of police agents Runö thus becomes a sacred asylum, an enchanted garden, in which our two wards may make love to their hearts’ content without the knowledge of the Court.”
“And the end of it all?”
“When her love is sufficiently strong she will be willing to fly with him from Russia. Cronstadt harbour is distant by water but eighteen miles. A swift boat and a dark night, and they are on board a vessel bound for England.”
“But should we in the meantime be detected in our plot by Alexander——”
“What then? Will he be very much vexed when we are supplying him with the pretext he wants?”
Pauline sighed.
“Ah me! If only I had told Lord Courtenay yesterday who his inamorata is, it would have prevented me from beginning this course of deception. Not till nightfall did it suddenly occur to me that knowledge of this fact would have been the best way of making him cease from the duel; and then from very pity I refrained from the telling, knowing what pain the revelation would bring him, and now—now it is too late! What will he think when he learns—as learn he must—how basely I am deceiving him?”
“Pooh! what matters what he thinks?”
“Much—to me,” she answered moodily.
At this point the pair found themselves appealed to by Wilfrid.
“Was there not a letter in the Princess’s dress-pocket?” he asked, giving his reason for the question.
“I can of myself testify that there was not,” said the unabashed doctor, “for I examined her clothing in the hope of finding some clue to her identity. If it were the object of the four ruffians to get hold of a compromising letter we can scarcely expect them to leave it upon her person.”
A specious argument that answered the purpose intended.
The Princess here put to Wilfrid a very sensible suggestion.
“This Prince Ouvaroff, who as you say acted as my escort from some unknown place to St. Petersburg, must surely know who I am. Is it not possible to communicate with him?”
“You echo my thoughts,” said Pauline. “Dr. Beauvais and I will go to St. Petersburg this very day for the purpose of seeing the Prince upon this matter.”
This proposal on the part of Pauline was more acceptable to the Princess than it was to Wilfrid.
“Supposing,” he whispered to Pauline, “that Ouvaroff suspects the motive of your questioning, and springs to the conclusion that Princess Marie must be at Runö?”
“Why, in that case,” whispered Pauline in turn, “she would be restored to her old surroundings. But have no fear. I’ll approach the matter so cautiously that he shall suspect nothing. I must not delay, however, lest I be too late, for he told me at the masquerade that the Czar was about to send him on a diplomatic mission to Berlin.”
So, accompanied by Beauvais, Pauline went the same day to St. Petersburg, but made no attempt to see Prince Ouvaroff.
While the doctor was transacting some private business, Pauline visited first the British Ambassador, and had an interview with him, which terminated with thesewords on her part: “Never mind how he was persuaded to give up the duel; you have my word for it that St. Petersburg and the Czar will see him no more.Thatsurely ought to content you.”
And it did, the Ambassador breathing a sigh of relief that the awkward business was over.
The bureau of Loris Baranoff, Chief of the Secret Police, was the next place to receive a call from her, and to judge by her smile as she quitted his office the result of her mission was a complete success.