CHAPTER XXXBEHIND THE CURTAIN
The door by which Wilfrid and Marie had entered was not the only one giving access to the room; at the opposite end was a second, partly open, and along the corridor leading to this came the sound of voices, two in number, a woman’s and a man’s.
Pauline and the Czar were approaching. A moment more and they would be within the room.
Marie’s terrified air alarmed Wilfrid. She must be kept from the trying ordeal of facing the Czar. As it was too late, however, to escape from the room, he hastily drew her behind a curtain that hung across the entrance of an alcove, and, seating her in afauteuilthat happened by good fortune to be there, placed his finger upon her lips as a warning for her to be silent, a warning that was scarcely needed.
A moment afterwards the Czar and Pauline were in the room.
The drapery of the alcove consisted of two curtains, hung so as to leave from top to bottom an opening of about an inch in width, that enabled Wilfrid to see the Czar.
Tall and handsome, Alexander was endowed with a presence that, majestic in itself, was rendered more so by a grand and brilliant uniform. Wilfrid, despite his prejudice, was compelled to admit that here was amanas well as an emperor. His stately aspect seemed to breathe a sort of challenge to Wilfrid, upon whom there stole that elemental feeling that made the old heathen warrior raise his clenched fist to the skies with the cry of, “I defy thee, O Odin! Come down from heaven and let us try which is the better man!”
But Wilfrid’s desire to try conclusions with the Czar was immediately lost in a new interest as he viewed that monarch’s manner towards Pauline.
As she entered, her hand resting lightly upon his arm, he was bending over her with eyes that plainly spoke of love, though her reserved air showed that she did not return the feeling.
Wilfrid’s gorge rose. Not content with making love to Marie, this imperial libertine sought to lure Pauline also to his arms! Was this the business of an emperor? Fortunately he seemed as little likely to succeed in the one case as the other.
On seeing the two entering, Wilfrid thought that the Czar’s visit was over, and that Pauline was conducting him through this apartment as being the shortest way out of the castle. He was wrong. The two had come to this apartment for a private talk, for the Czar, having led Pauline to an ottoman, took his place beside her.
This was a development which Wilfrid had not anticipated. To continue longer in concealment would be to play the spy, yet remain there he must, on Marie’s account, since there was no way of quitting the alcove except by revealing himself.
At first, with an odd sense of preserving his honour, Wilfrid tried not to listen, endeavouring to fix his attention on other matters. But the attempt was a failure; against his wish he was attracted by the words of the speakers, and as the dialogue grew, so, too, did his interest.
“You were praying in the oratory,” said Alexander to Pauline. “Didmyname mingle with your prayers?”
“Yes, Sire,” answered Pauline gravely. “I prayed for you more earnestly than ever I prayed before.”
The melancholy, seldom absent from the Czar’s face since his father’s death, brightened into a smile.
“And what was the petition on my behalf?”
“That your Majesty might have a right judgment,” replied Pauline with a meaning plain enough to Wilfrid, though not to the Czar.
“‘Sire!’ ‘Majesty!’” repeated Alexander, with what in a woman would be called a pout. “Leave this formalstyle to ministers and courtiers. With you I am Sasha. Ah! shall I ever forget the night when first you called me by that name? Never did it sound so pretty as when coming from your lips! And you said that your name to me must be no more Baroness but Pauline. Do you remember?”
“I remember,” she answered with a sigh.
Becoming conscious of this restraint in her manner, Alexander eyed her wistfully, failing, however, to divine the reason for her altered demeanour.
He was not much more than a youth and a somewhat simple-minded one to boot, but he had a high sense of his sovereignty, and it never occurred to him that the gallantries of an emperor could be other than acceptable to the object of them.
“Pauline, how beautiful you are!” he murmured after a moment’s silence.
Time was when she would have thrilled at such language. But to-night his words had lost their old charm.
“Your Majesty must not speak thus.”
“‘Majesty’ again? But I let it pass. Why must I refrain from speaking the truth?”
“You must reserve such language for Elizavetta only.”
“Elizavetta!” said Alexander, his face darkening with a noble but mistaken scorn. “Elizavetta! A wife who from her wedding-day never loved her husband.”
“I think your Majesty is wrong.”
“Nay, I will prove myself to be right. Do princesses ever marry for love? Is it not their duty to take the suitor whom political interest prescribes? Princess Marie of Baden was only fourteen when her parents bade her prepare for her wedding. The Empress Catharine desired that she should be the wife of her grandson Alexander, then a youth of fifteen.”
Princess Marie!The title dropped lightly from the lips of the speaker, but upon the woman behind the curtain it fell with a shock more startling, perhaps, than if it had been the voice of the archangel calling her to her final doom.
In one swift moment all the sweetness and brightness of life was extinguished for Marie by the ghastly revelationthat she was already a wife. What booted it that her consort was a Czar? Better, far better, so ran her wild thoughts, had she gone down in the waters of the Nevka, or died on reaching the Silver Strand, than live to see this sudden mockery of all her sweet hopes.
Her fingers were still locked within Wilfrid’s, but as she realised that her love for him was now a sinful thing, that henceforth she must live apart from him, that she must be handed over to a husband, who, at that very moment was playing her false, a husband, who, in her present state of mind was a stranger to her, nay more, utterly abhorrent, there broke from her a low wail of anguish, which the Czar and Pauline would surely have heard had not their attention been absorbed in each other.
As for Wilfrid, he, too, was completely stunned, as much by the thought of losing Marie, as by the discovery that, purposing to deliver a beautiful princess from the attentions of a too-amorous Czar, he was really guilty of attempting to steal a wife from her husband. In the matter of the duel it was now clear that the right had been on the side of the Czar, a mortifying and humiliating thought for Wilfrid. Still, his position was a blameless one, as far as he was concerned, being due, not to intentional wrong-doing, but to ignorance.
“How could a girl of fourteen,” Alexander continued, “be expected to love a man whom she had never seen? She married me because she was told to do so. Without a murmur she accepted a new religion, the Greek; a new name, Elizavetta. In the same way she would have accepted the Sultan and Islamism.”
“In blaming her you blame yourself, who were equally submissive to Catharine’s will.”
“For her submission I blame her not, but for—you shall hear.
“We married and at first were happy:—at leastIwas. Her beauty, her sweetness, charmed me. Yes, I truly loved her till—till I discovered that I held only the second place in her heart.”
“I think your Majesty errs. How did you discover it?”
“In the early days of our betrothal she spoke to me of a certain Englishman, Wilfrid Courtenay, and earnestly begged that she might be permitted to continue wearing a locket containing his portrait on the plea that he had saved her life.
“As heaven is my witness, I bore this man no jealousy: nay, I told her I would love him for her sake, that when I was Czar I would invite him to my Court and pay him high honour as one who had preserved for me a sweet and fair bride.
“But mark the sequel.
“One night—it is now about two years ago—I entered her bed-chamber at a late hour, and found her fast asleep. As I bent over her, admiring her beauty, a smile curved her lips, and from them came a word softly spoken. That word was—‘Wilfrid’!
“I started back as from the hiss of a serpent. The Englishman was in her thoughts, his name was on her lips, his image within a locket lay upon her breast!
“That night was the beginning of my suspicions.”
“Suspicions which Baranoff did his best to fan,” interjected Pauline.
“Baranoff has been the zealous guardian of my honour. ’Twas he who bade me observe. And I observed. I watched and waited and found my suspicions verified. Her guilt at the Inn of the Silver Birch rests on the testimony of others, but at the Sumaroff Masquerade I had the evidence of my own eyes. In a retired part of the gardens I surprised her, wrapped in Lord Courtenay’s arms, submitting to his caresses. Detected in the very act of guilt she durst not face me: she durst not return to the palace. She fled that very night. Lord Courtenay disappeared at the same time. Is it not plain that they went together?”
“Is that the talk of St. Petersburg?”
“Neither St. Petersburg nor the Court itself is aware of her flight. Would you have me make my humiliation the theme of every gossip’s tongue? No! the matter is kept a secret. The public journals have received notification that the Czarina is spending a few weeks in religious seclusion at the Convent of theAscension. Meantime the police agents have received their orders—to make diligent search for Lord Courtenay. Where he is, there will Marie be found.”
“And when they are found?”
“For her, the nun’s cell; for him, the headsman’s axe.”
“Your Majesty is somewhat severe upon them. Seeing you have resolved that Plato shall pronounce your divorce, why should she not be left free to go with Lord Courtenay, if she will?”
“An ex-Czarina to re-marry! That were to put a premium upon adultery and set a dangerous precedent. Let her have her lover? Give her the prize she has been guiltily striving for? Let him parade Europe with an ex-empress for his bride, boasting how he had won her from Alexander? That were a humiliation too much to be borne. No! Death for him; for her, life-long penitence in a convent.—She has chosen to forfeit my affection and my throne; let me think no more of her.”
He took Pauline’s hand; she did not resist, but let her fingers rest passively within his.
“Pauline, you know our compact?”
She knew, and the memory of it troubled her.
“I have not forgotten,” said he, “your sudden start when first I confessed my love to you, your grave look, your pleading for Marie, your little homily on virtue: ‘I may be the wife, I will never be the mistress of a Czar.’ I loved you all the more for that saying. It was then I told you of Marie’s secret longing, and you agreed that if guilt should be found in her, and I should put her away, you would be my wife. Was it not so? To prove how much I was in earnest did I not commit my promise to writing?”
“You did, Sire. It is here,” she replied, withdrawing her hand from his and taking the document from her bosom. “Let me return it to you. Or, better still—”
She rose from the ottoman and, placing one end of the scroll to a lighted taper in the chandelier, let the parchment burn till the flame all but touched her fingers.The charred fragment floated from her hand to the floor.
“It was a dishonourable compact. It shames me to recall it.”
The writer of the document had watched her action with a troubled look.
“Pauline,” he said gently, “in what have I offended? What has caused this difference in you? Why are you so cold to-day? Speak, as you spoke at our last meeting, or I—I——”
His voice trembling with emotion, he rose to his feet and, taking both her hands within his own, strove to look into her averted face.
“Nay, do not turn from me,” said he. “It is a Czar that offers you his love. Among the royal princesses of Europe is there one but would thrill with pleasure to be as you are to me? All that I have is yours—palaces, gold, jewels. You will be above queens. At my coming coronation you shall sit beside me on the throne amid a blaze of glory, admired and worshipped by all. Ten thousand swords will flash from their scabbards, ten thousand of the noblest in the Empire will swear to shed their last drop of blood in your defence. My ministers shall be nothing to me; it is your sweet counsel I shall follow. Your policy shall be my policy. Do I not know that the dearest wish of your heart is to see the exiled Bourbons restored to the throne of France? That wish shall become a reality; at your word armies shall march to overturn this Corsican adventurer.”
Pauline caught her breath at this last—of all his arguments the only one that had power to move her. But her hesitation lasted for a moment only. Strengthened by prayer, purified in mind, she had come forth from the oratory a new creature, armed with a power that enabled her to set aside the ambitious hopes that had dazzled her during so many months.
“It is useless to tempt me, Sire,” she said firmly, seeking to withdraw her hands. “It must not be.”
“Why not?”
“I will not wrong Marie. I will not deprive an innocentwoman of a husband’s love, of an imperial diadem, to gratify my own ambition! Once—with shame I confess it—I desired her to walk in the ways of guilt; nay, I have plotted for that very end; her fall should be my stepping-stone to glory and power; but now my eyes have become opened. Equivocal as the Empress’s conduct may have seemed, I do not believe that her love has ever seriously wandered from you. If your Majesty will sit calmly down and listen to me, I will so prove her innocence that——”
The sentence was never finished.
Marie, overwhelmed by emotion, at this moment clutched at theportiêre, and the curtain fell.
The fabric, though light, made a swish that caused the Czar to turn his head toward the alcove. And there, clearly revealed in the brilliant light, stood Wilfrid and the missing Czarina!