It was not destined that Olga should leave Russia yet.
A terrible event happened within the next few hours, the report of which rang through Russia like a clap of thunder, convulsing the whole nation, and shaking for the moment the entire social fabric to its lowest foundations. And one of its smaller consequences was to ruin my plans and expose me to infinite personal peril.
Olga was to start at noon, and I proposed to see her an hour before then, for what I knew would be a very trying ordeal. But I was at that hour in the midst of a very different kind of interview.
Outside official circles I was one of the first men to learn the news. Just before ten o'clock a messenger came with a request for me to go at once to the chief Police Bureau. I started in the full conviction that for some cause Tueski had changed his mind and meant to arrest me. I was of course helpless: and could do no more than scribble a hasty line to Olga telling her of my appointment, asking her not to wait for me, and bidding her good-bye. But I did not send it. The police agent said with great politeness he would prefer my not doing anything then: I could send the note equally well from the Bureau. I knew what that meant, and yielded.
The moment I arrived at the office I could see that some event of altogether unusual importance and gravity had occurred. The air was laden with the suggestion of excitement. There was an absence of that orderly, business-like routine always characteristic of Russian public offices. The police agents were present in exceptionally large numbers; hurrying through the corridors, thronging the rooms, and standing in groups engaged in animated discussion.
I was kept waiting some time, perhaps half an hour, before a word was spoken to me by anyone in authority; and then I was ushered into the presence of a man I did not know.
"I am sorry to trouble you, Lieutenant Petrovitch, but there are one or two questions you can answer—and I need not say that as a Russian officer, bearing the Emperor's commission, we shall look to you to reply very fully."
I bowed. It was a fit preface to a conversation which should end as such things generally did. But at any rate I should learn what they intended to do with me. Before he spoke again I asked that the letter I had written to Olga might be sent; but he put the question aside, with a curt reply that it could wait until the Emperor's business was finished; and again I bowed in acquiescence. I could do nothing.
"Please to tell me exactly what passed between you and M. Tueski yesterday," he said. "And particularly how you obtained the permits for yourself and sister. I invite you to be particularly frank."
The question startled me. I couldn't understand it.
"Your question surprises me," I replied, to gain a little time to think. "M. Tueski himself knows, and can surely tell you everything."
"I ask my questions in the name of the Emperor, sir," returned my examiner, sternly.
"M. Tueski had done me the honour of trying to have me murdered, and I went to see him to demand the reason. He did not deny it. I persuaded him in the end to abandon his private malice and prevailed upon him to give me the permits for myself and my sister to leave Russia for a while. When he had given them to me I left him."
"Where are they?"
"Here is one. The other is with my sister, who leaves Moscow at midday."
"You may stop her attempting to leave. It will be useless. What else passed?" And he then plunged into a close cross-examination of me, the real object of which I could not guess, unless it meant that Tueski had in some way got into a mess for letting me have the permits. I answered all the questions as fully as possible, taking care only to avoid mentioning Paula Tueski's name in connection with the compact with her husband.
To my surprise I seemed to satisfy the man for the time. When he had about turned me inside out, he sat for some minutes looking over my answers and comparing them with some of his notes: after which he remained thinking closely.
"What did you do after leaving M. Tueski?"
"I went straight to my rooms to my sister and Madame Tueski; together we drove Madame Tueski to her house; I then went home with my sister, remained there about an hour, or perhaps less; and went home and to bed."
"You have told me all you know, Lieutenant?"
"You can ask M. Tueski," I returned.
He fixed his eyes steadily on me while I could have counted twenty, and then said slowly and with deep emphasis:—
"M. Tueski is dead."
"Dead!" I repeated in the profoundest surprise.
"Murdered. Found this morning in the lower part of his own house with a dagger thrust through his heart."
"Murdered?" I could scarcely believe my ears.
"Yes. 'For Freedom's sake'," said the man with a curl of the lip. "At least, so a message on the dagger said. Now you can understand the significance of my questions."
I understood it all well enough: far better than the man himself even imagined; and I was completely beaten as to what the inner meaning of this most terrible event could be.
One of my first reflections was that if any of the suspicions of my Nihilism, which the dead man entertained, were chronicled anywhere, my arrest and that of Olga would certainly follow; and we should both be doomed.
"I can scarcely realise it," I said. "It is horrible!"
"So these wretches will find," returned my interlocutor. "These carrion! But now, in view of this—and I have told you because of the candid manner in which you have answered my questions—is there anything you noticed in your visit yesterday to help us."
Clearly, he did not suspect me; and no records had been found yet.
"No. The place seemed alive with inmates—like a rabbit warren. Enough to have held it against a regiment. Good God, what villains!" I cried in horror. Mine was genuine feeling enough, for some of the terrible effects to myself were fast crowding into my thoughts. I recalled my encounter with my Nihilist comrade on the very threshold of the house.
"Of course, those permits will be withdrawn now, Lieutenant," said the official as he dismissed me. But his manner was much less severe and curt than at the outset. "As a matter of fact they ought never to have been granted, though I cannot explain why just now. But under the circumstances you will probably feel personally unwilling to leave Russia at such a juncture."
"I should feel myself a traitor," said I, grandiloquently; and in fact I did feel very much like one as I left him, rejoicing that I still breathed the fresh air of heaven instead of the foetid atmosphere of a gaol.
One thing was certain now—neither Olga nor I could hope to escape yet. Any attempt would be fatal. The murder of such a man would mean that the lurid search light of suspicion would fall in all directions, on the guilty and guiltless alike. The liberty certainly, and probably the life, of every suspected Nihilist in Moscow at the moment were at stake: and the slightest trip or false step on our part would amount to a direct invitation to ruin.
As I walked back sadly and thoughtfully to my rooms, I had abundant proofs of the terrible effects of the assassination. The police agents were everywhere, watching, raiding, arresting; and in my short walk I met more than one gloomy party of them, each with its one or two prisoners in their midst, hurrying on foot or in hired carriages to the police stations.
It is not my business, however, to describe here the scenes that followed the most daring, most secret, most thrilling, and save one, most terrible assassination that ever convulsed Russia. The murder of the Czar stirred the surface of the world more, because it had more of the pageantry of crime about it; but the death of the Chief of the Secret Police caused a much deeper sense of insecurity, and spread a far greater dread of the secret power of Nihilism.
Who had done it? To me it was an inscrutable mystery; unless it had been the man I had seen near the house. But what I had to consider was not whose hand had driven the dagger home, but rather what the effects would be to me and to her for whose safety I now felt more fears and concern than I had felt for myself in all my life.
One incident in the interview I had just had impressed me greatly: the reference which the official had dropped as to the power behind Tueski in dealing with me. My questioner had seemed to know about it that morning: and all this perplexed me.
As soon as I reached my rooms I had to hurry off to the barracks in response to an urgent summons; and I joined readily in the excited conversation of my comrades about this latest Nihilist stroke. The news was only beginning to leak out, and it assumed the wildest shapes; nor did I feel at liberty to reduce the rumours to facts.
Before the morning's work was over orders came that the troops were to be paraded for duty in the streets: and we were told off for patrol work in different parts of the city to protect the railway stations, and other public buildings. All that day we were kept on duty; and as other troops came pouring in from other centres the whole place seemed under arms like a beleaguered town.
All day and all night the raids and surprise visits by the police were in progress, and hundreds, if not thousands of men and women must have been arrested, until the gaols were crowded to suffocation point, and every spot where prisoners could be packed was crammed and choked with suspects.
The cries and curses of men and the shrieks of women made the air stifling.
We were not relieved until late at night, having been all day without food; and even then we were kept in the barracks in readiness for any disturbance.
The next day's programme was much the same; and I fretted at not being able to either see or send to Olga. Knowing of her brother's Nihilism she would surely think I had been arrested; while I on my side was afraid for her.
In the afternoon of the third day we got leave from duty and from barracks for a few hours; and I went straight off to Olga. Meanwhile not a hint had been obtained as to the identity of the assassin.
I found Olga white and wan and ill on my account; and when we met I was on my side almost too moved for speech. At first I could do no more than glance into her eyes as we clasped each the other's hand.
"You are looking frightfully ill, Olga," I said at length.
She returned my look without a word and then her brow contracted, she breathed deeply as if in pain, and turning away wrung her hands with a gesture of despair.
"What is the matter? What has happened to you? There must be something..." I stopped, or rather the sight of the white face all drawn and quivering with pain stopped me.
"Oh, it is too horrible, too awful! God have mercy on us! God have mercy on us!"
Bad as things were so far as I knew them, this dejection seemed disproportionate and excessive. She was like a mad woman distraught with fear or grief; and she waved her hands about as if wrestling with emotions she could not conquer.
"Oh, it can't be true; it can't be," she moaned; and then came suddenly to me, turned my face to the light holding it between her white trembling hands, and gazed at me with a look of mingled anguish, fear, doubt, wildness, and—love; her lips parted and her bosom rising and falling as if with the strain of her passionate feelings.
When her scrutiny was over, her hands seemed to slip down and she fell on her knees close to me and I heard her muttering prayers with vehement fervour.
"What does this mean, Olga?" I asked gently, bending down and laying my hand on her shoulder. She looked round and up at my touch, and tried to smile. Then she rose and standing opposite to me, put her hands on my two shoulders so that her face was close beneath mine. And all the time she was muttering prayers. Then, in a voice all broken and tremulous, she said:—
"Brother, swear as you believe there is a God in Heaven, you will answer truly what I ask."
"I will. I swear it," I answered, wishing to quiet her.
"Did you really do this?"
"Do what?" I asked, not understanding.
"Kill Christian Tueski?"
"Did I kill him? No, child, certainly not." I spoke in the greatest astonishment.
"Oaths may bind you to secrecy, I know. But for God's sake, tell me the truth—the truth. You can tell me. I am...." I felt her shudder.
"Is it this which has been driving you distracted? There is no cause. I know no more by whose hand that man came by his death than a babe unborn."
"Say that again, Alexis. Say it again. It is the sweetest music I have heard in all my life."
I repeated the assurance, and a smile of genuine relief broke out over her face. Next she cried and laughed and cried again, and then sat down as if completely overcome by the rush of relief from a too heavy strain.
"What does all this mean?" I asked quietly, after a while. "Try and tell me."
"I have been like a mad thing for two days. Let me wait awhile. I will tell you presently. Oh, thank God, thank God for what you have said. It drove me mad to think you should have been driven to this by me; and that perhaps for my sake you might have been urged to do such a horrible thing. Waking and sleeping alike I have thought of nothing but of your suffering torture and death. And all through me—through me." She covered her face in horror at the remembrance of her thoughts: but a moment later took away her hands to smile at me.
"You have not told me yet what made you think anything of the sort."
"I will tell you. As soon as I heard the news, I knew of course that as I had been mixed up in some old Nihilist troubles, it would be hopeless for me to think of leaving Moscow; and when the police agent came I let him understand that I had given up all thought of travelling yet. Then I was all anxiety for news of you, and in the afternoon I went to your rooms. I found the door shut and could hear nothing. Then I began to fear for you. I am only a woman."
She stopped and smiled to me before resuming. Then with a shudder she continued:—
"Then a most strange thing happened, Borlas came to me just at dusk; and he looked so strange that at first I thought he had been drinking. Saying he had a message from you he waited until I had sent the servant away.
"'What is it?' I asked.
"For answer he gave me a sign that made my heart sink. I knew it too well, and I looked at him with the keenest scrutiny. Had the Nihilists put a spy on you even in your own servant? Then I saw—that it was not Borlas, but a man so cleverly made up to resemble him that I had been at first deceived.
"'What do you want here?' I asked, now with every nerve in my body at full tension.
"'Do you know?' and the light in his eyes seemed to flash into mine.
"'Do I know what?' I could see there was something behind all this.
"He bent close to me, though we were of course alone, and spoke his reply in a fierce whisper.
"'Tell your brother that after this proof our hearts beat but for him; our plans shall all wait on him; every man of us will go to his death silently and cheerfully at his mere bidding. He leads, we follow. He has nobly kept his pledge for the cause of God and Freedom.'
"As I heard this my heart seemed to stop in pain. I had to hold to the table to save myself from falling."
"'Do you mean,' I gasped, 'that Alexis has murdered....'
"'Silence, sister,' replied the man sternly. 'That is no word for you to utter or for me to hear. Your brother is as true a friend as Russian Liberty ever had; and I thank my God that I have ever been allowed to even touch the hand that has dealt this vigorous blow and done this noble and righteous act.'
"'I will tell him,' I said.
"'Tell him also, he need have no fear. Not a man who was at the meeting is in the city now, save me; and not a single soul of the thousands these hell dogs of tyranny can seize knows anything—save only me. And I would to the Almighty God they would take me and torture me and tear my flesh off bit by bit with their cursed red-hot pincers that I might use my last breath and my latest effort to taunt them that I know the hero who has done it, and die with my knowledge a secret.'
"Then this terrible man, you may not know his name, but I know him, left me, telling me it was 'a glorious day for Russia, and that God would smile for ever upon you for this deed.' And I—I was plunged into a maelstrom of agonising fears, racking doubts, and poisoned thoughts about you and what I had led you to do."
What Olga said had also immense importance and significance for me. It shewed me a startling view of my situation. It was clear the Nihilists attributed the murder to me, and what effect that would have upon us I was at a loss even to conjecture.
"The man's blood is not on my hands, Olga; but I cannot be surprised at the mistake. I will tell you everything;" and I told her then all that had passed.
"Who can have done it then?" she asked, when I finished.
"It is as complete a mystery to me as to the police. The man I saw near the house might have done it; but then I suppose it must have been the same man who came to you: and in that case he certainly wouldn't have set it down to me. I am beaten. But I am likely to find the wrongful inheritance embarrassing. I must be more cautious than ever to draw down no word of suspicion upon either of us. We must both be scrupulously careful. And thus it will be impossible for you to think of getting away."
"It's a leaden sky that has no silver streak," replied Olga. "And that impossibility is my streak."
I could not but understand this, and even while my judgment condemned her, my heart was warmed by her words. But my judgment spoke.
"If you were away my anxieties would be all but ended."
"If I were away my anxieties would be all but unendurable," she retorted, following my words and smiling. It was not possible to hear this with anything but delight; but I had my feelings too well under control now to let them be seen easily.
"That may be," I said. "But my first and chief effort will be to get you safe across the frontier."
She made no answer: but her manner told me she would not consent to go until it had become a rank impossibility for her to stay. Presently she said with much feeling:—
"If I had been away and the news had come that you had done the thing these men assert, how do you think I could have borne it? I should have either come rushing back here or have died of remorse and fear and anxiety on your account. It was through me you commenced all this."
"But of my own choice that I continued," I replied. "And believe me, if all were to come over again I should act in just the same way. I have never had such a glorious time before; and all I want now is to see you safe."
Olga paused to look at me steadily.
"You've never told me all the reason why you were so ready to take all these desperate risks. Will you tell me now?"
"I had made a mess of things generally, as I told you before," I answered, with a smile and a slight flush at the reminiscences thus disturbed by her question.
"Was there a woman in it?" Her eyes were fixed on me as she put the question.
"There's a woman in most things," I answered, equivocally.
"Yes, I suppose so." She turned away and looked down, and asked next:—
"Were you very fond of her, Alexis?"
"Judging by the little ripple that remains on the surface now that she's gone out of my life, no: judging by the splash the stone made at first, yes. But she's gone."
"Yet the waters of the pool may be left permanently clouded. I am sorry for you, Alexis: and if you were really my brother, I would try and help you two together."
"That's not altogether a very proper thing to say." I spoke lightly, and she looked up to question me. "Her husband might not thank you, I mean: though I'm not quite sure about that;" and then having told her so much, I told her the story of my last meeting with Sir Philip Cargill and Edith. But she did not take it as I wished.
"You must have loved her if you meant to kill her," she said.
"And ceased then, if I left her to live a miserable life."
"I should like to see the woman you have ceased to love," she said, woman-like in curiosity—and something else.
"You may do that yet, if only Alexis Petrovitch can make a safe way for his sister out of Russia;" and then I added, pausing and looking at her with a meaning in my eyes which I wished her to understand though I dared not put it in plain words:—"But we shall not be brother and sister then."
She glanced up hurriedly, her face aglow with a sudden rush of thought—pleasurable thought too—and then looked down again and smiled.
"In that case how should we two be together?" she asked.
"Do you mean that such a time as this will be likely to render us ready to part?"
To that her only answer was another glance and a deeper blush. Then I made an effort and recovered myself on the very verge.
"But while we are here, we are brother and sister, Olga;" and feeling that if I wished to keep other things unsaid I had better go away, I left her.
The more I contemplated the position the less I liked it, and the more urgent appeared the reasons for hurrying Olga out of the country.
All my care was for her. Before this new feeling of mine for her had forced itself upon me, the situation had been really a game of wits with my life as the stake; but now Olga's life, or at least her liberty, was also at stake. It was there the crisis pinched me till I winced and writhed under it. Fear had got hold of me at last and I tugged restlessly at the chain.
That night and the next day, the day of Christian Tueski's funeral, were occupied with heavy duties, because the authorities, both military and civil, persisted in believing there was danger of an émeute. I could have counselled them differently if I had dared to open my lips. At least I thought I could; although I did not then hold the key to the mystery.
I got it from Paula Tueski.
In the afternoon of the day but one after the funeral, I had a brief note asking me to call on her.
I went and found her surrounded by all the signs and trappings of the deepest mourning. She received me very gravely, and while there was anyone in the room, she played the part of the sorrowing, disconsolate widow: but the instant we were alone she shewed a most indecent and revolting haste to let me know her mind.
"We are alone, now, Alexis," she said.
"I have called as you asked and because I wished to express my sympathy...."
"Psh! Don't let us be hypocrites, you and I," she exclaimed, half angrily, and with great energy. "I do not pretend to you that I am sorry to be free, and don't you pretend to me either."
I didn't answer, and my silence irritated her.
"Would you have me weep, tear my hair, put ashes on my head and grovel in the dust because the biggest villain and coward and beast that ever lived in human shape is dead? I hated him living; shall I love him dead?"
"At least the dead are dead, and to revile them is mere empty brutality," said I, somewhat harshly.
"Then I like empty brutality if it relieves my feelings. God! I have been a hypocrite long enough. I should hate myself if I did not speak the truth to you."
I shrugged my shoulders. I had no answer.
"Why didn't you send a wreath of pure white flowers as an emblem of your regard? Why not a message to swell the millions of lies that men have uttered in their squalid fear of offending the Government by silence? Ugh! It makes me sick when I think of it all;" and she shuddered as if in disgust. "He was a devil, and I won't call him by any softer name merely because his power to harm is gone. Didn't he try to murder you? And wasn't it jealousy? Ah, we have much to be thankful to the Nihilists for, you and I." There was an indescribable suggestion of a hidden meaning about this.
I hated the woman.
"You have no clue yet, I suppose?"
"Yes, I have a clue," she replied, with a laugh that sounded like a threat. "I can put my hand on the murderer when I will—and I will, if he proves a traitor."
"You are in a dramatic mood," I answered. "Who is the man? Why not denounce him? Surely this act is what you must call treachery."
"There was a Nihilist plot to kill the man," she said, speaking with contemptuous flippancy of accent of the dead.
"Yes, I told you that myself," I replied.
"It was because of that he died."
"So everybody thinks."
"And how do you account for it?" she asked, looking at me keenly.
"I have no more idea than yourself."
She laughed; and a hard forced laugh it was. Then she got up from her chair and walked twice up and down the room in dead silence. She stopped in front of me and stared down into my eyes.
"Alexis, do you really love me?"
The question was an exceedingly unpleasant one and filled me with disgust.
"Surely this is no time for us to speak of such things," I said.
"Do you love me, Alexis," she repeated.
"I will not answer now," I said, rising.
"Why not? Why should we not speak of love now—now, aye, and always? Or is your passion so poor and sickly a thing that a puff from the wind of propriety kills it? Not speak of such things! I would plight my love to you across the very body of the dead man!" She spoke with passionate vehemence. "Remember what I told you—your life is mine. You cannot escape me. Now, tell me, do you love me?"
"I have given my answer, and if you ask that question again to-day I will not stop in the room," I said angrily: the woman's persistency increasing my disgust.
She laughed—a half hysterical laugh of anger.
"So you will not stop in the room and will never, I suppose, return. Be careful," she cried, with one of her quick passionate changes. "Or I will send you away and never let you come back except begging for mercy on your knees for yourself and your sister." She turned away and stood by the window; and I could see by her movements that she was struggling with violent emotions.
She came back at length, the face paler and the voice not so steady.
"I will ask you if you love me," she said. "And I dare you to go away from the room."
I accepted the challenge without an instant's hesitation.
"I am going. I will see you when you are cooler," and I went to the door.
With a quick rush she prevented my opening it, and putting her back to it stared at me in the most violent passion, which thickened her voice as she spoke.
"You shall go directly—if you wish to. You will make me hate you, one day, Alexis, and then—I will kill you."
"It will be far better for me to come some other time," I said, anxious to leave.
"You will have plenty of opportunities, never fear," she retorted, with a very angry sneering laugh. "And what is more, you will not dare not to use them. Listen—it is love for you drives me to this—a love that you can never escape now, Alexis, even if you had the will."
She paused; but I said nothing. I had nothing to say. All I wished was to get away.
"Do you think there is anything I would not do for your love, Alexis? I have told you there is nothing—told you so scores of times. Now, I have proved it. Do you hear—proved it. I proved it a few nights ago when this hand plunged the dagger hilt deep into my husband's heart—for your sake."
I started back and looked at the woman in horror.
"Yes, this hand"—she held it out—"so white, smooth, deft, and shapely. Don't start from it. There is no blood shewing on it now. And never was. I know how to thrust a dagger home too cleverly to leave a trace of either blood or guilt on me. In all this Moscow of ours the one person who is deemed above all others guiltless—is myself. Had it been in reality the Nihilist deadly secret stroke that men deem it, it could not have been more cunningly contrived, more secretly planned, more fatally executed. Yet the motive was not hate of a Government, but love for a man. For you, Alexis: you and you only. Now do you wish to go?"
She moved away from the door; but I made no attempt to go. The horror of her story had fascinated me.
"There was a tinge of hate in it, too, mark you, and more than a tinge. But I'll tell you all. You ought to know, since you were in reality the cause of all. You gave me the motive, suggested the occasion, and provoked that which led to it. More than that, too, you can by a single word from me be made to bear the brunt. Now, will you go?"
Was the woman mad that she spoke in this way? If so, there was a devilish method in her madness, as the story she told quickly shewed me.
"I knew the day would come when either I should kill him or he would kill me; for he was a devil. Well, you roused all that was most evil, vicious, and fiendish in him in that interview; and when I saw him he was like a man bereft of his wits. Every form of reproach he could heap on me in cold, contemptuous, galling sneers he uttered with all the calculated aggravation that could make a taunt unbearable. He threatened me in every tone of menace: and when I answered, turned suddenly furious and struck me violent blows and vowed to kill me. It was then I recalled your words, that there was a Nihilist plot against his life; and I vowed I would be the means of carrying it out; for I knew I could easily put suspicion away from me. I lured him cunningly to that part of the house where he was found, plunged the dagger into his breast, put into his pocket the forged warning of a Nihilist attack, opened the house at a point where a man could have entered, fastened to the dagger the Nihilist watchword, and then crept away to my own rooms."
"It was a hellish plot," I exclaimed, hotly.
"It was inspired by love for you, Alexis. It was truly 'For Freedom's sake.' Freedom that should unite us for ever."
"Do you think I could ever be anything to a woman whose hand is red with murder?" I cried, in indignant horror.
"It was done for you—for love of you, Alexis."
"Love has no kin with murder," I exclaimed, bitterly.
"Your life is mine, remember," she answered, firmly. Her determination and strength were inexhaustible. "This makes you ten thousand times more surely mine than ever. I told you you were the cause—and also, that you could be made to bear the brunt. Listen! You know well enough what chance a Nihilist has on whom the fangs of suspicion have fastened. You are a Nihilist. Your sister is one also. I know this. Well, what chance, think you, would that Nihilist have of his life whose dagger it was that found its way between my husband's ribs. What then, if I had found the sheath of it and secreted it to save the man? Suppose too, that I had kept back the discovery because of my guilty love for him. And further that he had come at the time to tempt my honour and that he was leaving the house when my husband, roused by the noise I made, met him; and that I saw the deed done?" She paused and changed her tone to one of fierce directness, as she continued:—"The dagger that killed Christian Tueski is your own weapon, known by its sheath to a hundred people: and that sheath, with your name on it, is in my possession. What chance of life would there be for you and yours if these things were made known. Now, do you wish to go?"
A hot and passionate reply rose to my lips, but was checked before uttered. I thought of Olga, and I knew that every word this woman said was true—that no power in Russia could save my life or Olga's liberty if the tale were told now.
Delay I must have at any cost. Time in which to meet this woman's horrible cunning and daring plot. If I had hated her before, she was now loathsome; while the fears she had stirred on Olga's account intensified and embittered a thousandfold my resentment. Yet hateful as the task was, I was prepared to continue my part with her.
"You think this love?" I said, after a pause in which she had been waiting breathlessly for me to speak. "Do women love the men they hold to them by the tether rope of threats?"
"Do women kill for the sake of men they do not love?"
"Do you think to keep my love by threatening me with death?"
"Have I not inflicted death to keep you? Why do you wish to bandy phrases? My deeds speak for themselves. They shew you well enough what I will dare to keep you true to me. You are mine, Alexis, and no power shall ever part us. I have told you this often before. It was you who sought me, who proffered me your love, who poured on me your caresses and roused the love in me, and roused it never to cease. Do you think me a silly simple fool to be wooed and won and, when deserted, willing to do no more than wring my feeble hands and shed silly tears, and prate and maunder between my stupid sobs, that my heart is broken and that I fain would die—Bah! I am not of that sort. I am a woman who can will and act, and fashion my own ends in my own way. It is not the stream that carries me, but I who turn the stream even though it be mingled with blood. No, no. If you play me false, Alexis, it is you, and not I, who shall die because my heart is broken."
She shewed this determination in every line of her beautiful face and movement of her magnificent figure, as she stood before me a lovely hateful type of a vengeful woman. She changed her mood, however, with astonishing suddenness and turned all softness and tenderness.
"But under all this lies my love," she said. "It was love drove me to everything. Your pledge, too, that made me feel, as nothing else could have done, the wall of separation between us while he lived; and my love could not endure it. Ah, how I love you!" and then in words burning with the fever of passion, she spoke of her love for me, lingering over the terms as if the mere utterance of them were an ecstatic delight. She laid all to the account of this love, and then went on to name her terms—that I must marry her.
While she was speaking, I was thinking; trying to see some flaw in the devilish coil she had spread round me. But I could see none. Time might find a way: but even time she grudged, and did not mean to give.
"But we can't be married now at the moment when your husband is scarcely lying cold in his grave," I said, aghast at her cold-blooded proposition. "Every man and woman in Moscow would immediately think we had murdered him together in order to marry."
"Every man and woman will not know," she answered calmly. "Do you think there is no such thing as a secret marriage possible in this Holy Russia of ours, or that gold cannot buy silence here just as anywhere else in the world?"
"I know that a secret marriage under these circumstances would put the lives of us both into the keeping of anyone who knew of it, however well you paid them. The more you paid, indeed, the more certain the inference."
"I care nothing for that; nor will you if you love me as you have often sworn you do." She uttered this with the energy and passion which always were shewn when she was crossed. But in this I was naturally as resolute as she.
"I will not do it," I said very firmly. "Understand me. I will not do it. It is nothing to do with love in any way at all: but simply self-protection. It would be sheer suicide, and that I can do much more simply in other ways. I refuse absolutely to put both our lives into the keeping of any man in Russia, however holy and however well bribed. When we are married, it must be openly, in the light of day and before men's faces; and that most certainly cannot be until all this excitement about your husband's death has died down, and the marriage can take place without causing suspicion. That must be at least six months hence—and probably a year or even two years."
"I won't wait," she cried instantly and angrily. "You want to break with me. I am no fool."
"As you will. Then instead of marrying me you can denounce me and come and see me beheaded or strangled. If you threaten me much longer," I said bitterly, "you will make me prefer one of the latter fates."
She bent close to me, trying to read my thoughts.
"And meanwhile?" she asked,
"Are you such a mad woman that you would have us placard the walls of the city with our secrets? Haven't we all Russia to hoodwink? Do you suppose your police agents and secret agents are all fools, to see nothing, think nothing, infer nothing? It may be hard for us to be apart, but what else is possible? Even this visit is fool-hardiness itself and may set a thousand tongues clacking. Heaven knows, if ever a pair of lovers had need of caution we have now! Have you dared so much for our marriage only to toss it all away now just for the lack of a little self-control? We must see very little of one another. That is the only possible course."
"I'll not consent," she cried again, vehemently, and broke out into a fresh storm of protests and reproaches. But I held to my decision, confident that she would see she must give way.
We parted without coming to any definite decision; and I was glad, because it spared me the infliction of those outward signs of affection in which she delighted to indulge and which now would have been more than ever repulsive.
But the knowledge of the increased peril and embarrassment overwhelmed me with a feeling of anxious doubt and most painful and galling impotence.
It seemed to me when I thought over my interview with Paula Tueski, that the complications which surrounded me could not possibly be increased. It was of course hopeless to think of leaving Russia except by some stratagem, or in disguise; and this would be all the more difficult because Olga must leave first, and her flight would undoubtedly turn attention on me.
A positively baffling set of conditions faced me therefore, whichever way I turned. If I stayed on, Paula Tueski would insist on the marriage, and the crisis would come that way. If I attempted to go, she herself would join with the police in following me, and the mere endeavour to fly would give just that colour to her story which would make all the world ready to believe it.
Again, if I tried the remaining alternative of proclaiming my identity, I had so egregiously compromised myself that I could not hope to escape heavy punishment of some kind; while it would certainly implicate Olga and at the same time have no effect against the direct lies Paula Tueski was ready to swear.
Above all, a great change had come over me. I wished to live and keep my freedom. The old indifference and apathy were gone. My object now was to get both Olga and myself out of the country in safety; and thus I took diametrically opposite views of difficulties which a few days previously—before I had made the discovery of my love for Olga—would have caused me little more than a laugh of amused perplexity.
Baffling as the puzzle was, however, it became infinitely more involved and perilous a few days later. Two fresh complications came to kill even every forlorn hope.
My Nihilist friends were responsible for the first.
The belief that I had struck down the Chief of the Secret Police and had done it in a manner so secret, mysterious, and impenetrable that it staggered the most ingenious police spies and defied the efforts of the astutest detectives, surrounded me with a glamour of wholly undeserved and undesired reputation.
The first intimation of this had reached me through Olga, and was followed by several others; and I received clear proof that I was now regarded as a sort of leader of the forlorn hopes of these wild and desperate men. A man who could alone and unaided achieve what I was believed to have accomplished was held capable of the greatest deeds. So they appeared to argue; and I was accordingly picked out next for a task of infinite danger and hazard in a plot of even more tremendous consequences than that of the recent murder.
It was nothing less than the assassination of the Czar.
It was resolved, by whom and in what centre of the Empire I never knew, to follow up the murder of Christian Tueski by the greater blow, and to strike this with the utmost possible despatch: as a proof of the desperate courage and daring of the Nihilists.
I was chosen to play one of the chief parts. I had no option to refuse. There was no choice given me. The task was committed to me; just as a command might have been given me by my military superior officer. When I attempted to decline, I was given to understand that refusal meant death.
I was thus placed in a position of cruel difficulty and I pondered with close self-searching what I ought to do. Looking back I think I made a blunder in not disclosing all I knew to the authorities, leaving them to take what steps they pleased; but in forming my decision at the time I was swayed by a number of considerations most difficult to weigh.
One of my chief reasons for holding my tongue was that as the plot followed so soon after the Tueski murder—for the plans were all made within a week—the fact that I knew so much of Nihilist plots at such a time, would bring both Olga and myself under suspicion of having been privy to the former one. In such a case everything I wished to win would be jeopardised. A single breath of suspicion would have been enough to sweep us both into a gaol; and once there, no one could say when, if ever, we should come out; for the whole country was red-hot against the Nihilists, and men of the highest rank and wealth were rotting in gaol side by side with the most abject and destitute paupers.
I was also much concerned as to my supposed past. I knew that the old Alexis was gravely compromised; but what he had actually done, I did not know. If any old offences were raked up I should be certain to be called to account for them now, while Olga would inevitably suffer with me.
For those reasons I decided to hold my tongue and to seek my own means for causing the infernal scheme to miss its aim. I reckoned that, as I was to have a principal part assigned to me, I could by my own effort, either through apparent stupidity or by wilful design, wreck the whole project; and with this object I thought carefully over every detail of it which was entrusted to me.
The scheme was ingenious and, save in one respect, simple enough. A fortnight later the Emperor was to pay a visit to Moscow, and already preparations had commenced for his reception. At one time it was thought he would refuse to come because of the Tueski murder; but with that unerring accuracy that always made me marvel, till I ascertained the cause, the Nihilist leaders learnt the Imperial intentions before they were known in some of even the closest official circles.
What the Czar decided to do was to have all the preparations continued as though the original arrangements for the visit were to be carried out; but at the last moment to make a change which would baffle any plots. He meant to alter the arrangement of the train by which he would travel: and this at the very last moment.
The object of this was, of course, to thwart any plot that might be laid to attack the train in which he travelled, so that thus the plotters might be discovered.
But the double cunning of the Nihilists was quite equal to this change: and the plot was indeed exactly what the officials had anticipated—to wreck the train in which the Czar travelled—and I think it was chosen for the very reason of its apparent obviousness. Given precise information of the Imperial movements and a little double cunning in the plans, it was likely enough that the authorities would be especially vulnerable in just that spot in which they believed they had most effectively guarded themselves.
The official reasoning was that if the train in which the Czar was publicly but erroneously believed to be travelling could pass safely, then that in which His Majesty would actually be, would be sure to get by without mishap. The Nihilist plans were laid in full knowledge of the official theory.
A part of the line about ten miles from the city where the rails ran in a dead straight course over a comparatively flat country for some five or six miles was chosen for the attack; and it was chosen because it was that which the authorities would the least suspect, since it was most easy to watch and guard. A man standing at either end of the long, flat, straight stretch could with a glass watch, not only the line itself, but also the land adjoining the line. Of all the spots the train would pass this was by far the unlikeliest to be selected for any Nihilist attack.
The most prominent and conspicuous spot of all was that, moreover, which was picked out for the actual attempt. At that particular point a shallow dip in the fields caused the line to be embanked to a height of some ten or twelve feet; and the key of the plan was to fix levers to two of the rails so that they could be moved at the very last moment, just when the train was within a few yards of them. In this way the train would be turned off the metals and sent over the embankment into the field.
The levers, worked by electric motive power, were of course out of sight under the wooden sleepers: and the wires were trailed in tubes down inside the embankment and away through field-drains to a house more than half a mile distant from the line, where the operators were to remain until after the "accident."
Personally, I did not dislike the scheme: because I thought I could see several ways in which I could prevent any fatal outcome; should I have to remain in the country long enough to compel me to take part in it. It would be easy enough for me to appear to lose my head at the last moment, for instance, and so bungle matters that the men who were to kill the Emperor would be in fact prevented from approaching him.
But there was also in this a desperate personal risk to myself. I knew that these men would be picked from among the most reckless and daring spirits in the Empire; men suffering under the grossest personal wrongs as well as motived by wild political fanaticism. To them the blood of either friend or foe was as nothing if it stood in the way of what their unbalanced minds deemed justice and right.
It was thus a perilous and slippery eminence to which I had been thrust, and it increased infinitely the hazard of my course.
My thoughts returned to the idea of flight with redoubled incentive, therefore; and a circumstance occurred which seemed to promise me some help in this direction.
A letter came to me from "Hamylton Tregethner." Olga's brother had escaped, as we knew, and had made his way to Paris. He was going on, he said, to America as soon as he had enjoyed himself: and when he found himself in New York, he purposed to change his name and nationality once more and be a Pole.
"I have not had many adventures," he wrote; "nor do I seem to have met many men who know me. But I had one encounter that was rather amusing. I was at breakfast and saw a man staring hard at me from the other side of the room. I thought he might be a friend, and so I did not look at him. But he would not let his eyes move from me, and when I left the table he followed and spoke to me. 'Hamylton, old man, I did not know you at first. You're looking frightfully ill and altered. You're not going to cut me.' This gave me a cue, though I did not understand all he said, when he added something about 'on account of somebody's conduct.' I did cut him, however; looked him hard in the face and curling my lip as if in profound contempt, I turned on my heel. I had the curiosity to ask afterwards who he was, and they gave me his name as the Hon. Rupert Balestier. I suppose I know him, but I thought the best way was not to speak. I did not shake him off, however: for that night he saw me again just when I was speaking English to some other men. I saw him listening as if he could not believe his ears; and as soon as I was alone he came up and asked me who I was and what right I had to masquerade as his old friend, Hamylton Tregethner. For answer I gave him another stare and got away. Then I changed my hotel and am going away from Paris for a few days. I do not intend to be bothered by the man."
My first impression of this incident was that it boded further danger. I knew Balestier. He was a man of great resolution and if he imagined that anyone was masquerading in my name in Paris, he would think nothing of rousing both the English and Russian Embassies; or of coming on to Moscow himself to probe the thing to the bottom. He loved mysteries; was most active, energetic, and enterprising; and nothing would suit him better than to have imported into his rather purposeless life some such task as a search for me half over Europe. He was quite capable, too, of jumping to the conclusion that the man he had met had murdered and was personating me; and in a belief of the kind he was just the man to raise the hue and cry in every police office on the Continent.
What the real Alexis called "speaking English" was of course bad enough to brand him anywhere as an impostor, should he try to pass himself off as an Englishman. Balestier had no doubt listened in amazement to the strange jargon coming from lips that looked like mine; and the extraordinary likeness and "my" peculiar conduct would quite complete his perplexity.
Probably I should hear more of the matter; and this set me considering whether I could not manage in some way to communicate with Balestier and get him to help in smuggling Olga across the frontier. He would revel in the work if I could only find him.
I turned to "Tregethner's" letter therefore to find the name of the hotel, and to my infinite annoyance the fool had not mentioned it; while his intention to run away from Paris and Balestier would cause more delay. The fellow was not only a coward but an idiot as well; and I could have kicked him liberally, if my foot would only have reached from Moscow to Paris.
As it was, Balestier, with the best will in the world, would probably be blundering about and plunging me still deeper into the mud, when he not only could, but would, have given me valuable help if I could have got at him to tell him what to do.
I felt like Tantalus, when I thought of it.