"They are not so clever as Englishmen--or Englishwomen."
"Except in trickery and blackmail, where they surpass them," retorted Leah, her petty rage insisting on having the last word.
Katinka permitted her the gratification, and they walked the whole length of the High Street in grim silence.
At a rude quay jutting from the beach of the lower town they boarded a disreputable boat, rowed by two pirates and steered by a third. The night was starry but moonless, comparatively calm, and noticeably chilly. Leah shivered as the boat made for a vivid green riding-light, which shone, an emerald star, no great distance from the shore. But her shiver might have been an admission of dread. Katinka took it to be so, and smiled in a gratified way as her enemy climbed the side of the steamer, which was a veritable gypsy of the sea, untidy, dirty, and decidedly questionable in honest eyes. Strange did the honours, loud-tongued and raucous.
"Guess it do my eyes good to see your Grace," was his welcome.
"Hold your tongue, and don't use my title," she replied furiously.
Strange's milk of human kindness turned sour on the instant. "I ain't high-falutin' enough, I s'pose. Pity I ain't a dandy skipper of sorts, all hair-oil an' giddy gold tags."
Leah turned her back without deigning a reply, and looked inquiringly at Katinka. The girl, with an enigmatic smile on her wan face, led the way down some greasy stairs, into a stuffy state-room, and opened the narrow door of a side-cabin. Leah entered and heard the lock click behind her. Evidently Mademoiselle Aksakoff did not think it judicious to remain.
"But I daresay her ear is at the key-hole," thought the Duchess, contemptuously. She was trying to preserve her self-respect by heaping obloquy on her rival, but scarcely succeeded as well as she desired. Then she said "Ugh!" twice and with emphasis.
The interjections were not meant for the girl's possible eavesdropping, but to show Leah's disgust at the close atmosphere of the cabin. It was a nauseous, musky, sickly odour, which reminded her only too vividly of the monkey-house at the Zoo. Neither light nor air entered the den, save through the round port-hole over the bunk, which was unscrewed. But even the briny sea-breeze blowing softly could not do away with that thick, tainted atmosphere which had provoked the visitor's exclamations. With her handkerchief to her mouth Leah's eyes strove to become accustomed to the faint light. She saw dimly a heap of blankets, but no form was visible beneath, and no face was to be seen. Possible trickery occurred to her, until a voice came heavily through the fetid gloom. Then, in spite of its odd, strangled sound, she felt instinctively that Demetrius was buried somewhere under the clothes.
"You will excuse the absence of a lamp, madame. My eyes are half blinded with the snow-glare, and very tender."
"How strangely you speak!" remarked Leah, involuntarily.
"A sore throat," was the hoarse reply. "Siberia, as madame must be aware, is not a summer climate." The wheezy sound ended in a kind of piping whistle.
"I am sorry you have suffered," said the Duchess, at a loss what to say. "Ugh, the smell!" she thought, seating herself on a locker, and feeling almost too sick to control her faculties.
"Madame is too good."
A dangerous pause ensued, while Leah wondered what was about to happen. The man assuredly was Demetrius, and Demetrius was assuredly extremely ill. It was within the bounds of possibility that he might spring up and kill her. The thought did not trouble her overmuch. So dangerous a business had to be faced undauntedly, and she kept down her womanly weakness with masculine strength. During those slow minutes she could hear the lapping of the waters, on which the vessel rocked; hear also the laboured breathing of the sick man. This stopped for a moment, and then did she hear her own easy breaths. Demetrius evidently heard them also, and had paused to listen. He laughed weakly, softly, clucking like a fowl.
"Madame is very brave."
"I'm frightened to death," she assured him, to excite his pity.
"Your breathing tells me otherwise. I am certain, madame, that your pulse beats regularly, and that your nerves are entirely in order."
"Is this a consultation?" she asked coolly.
"It is the farewell of two who loved," murmured the hard, thick voice, muffled by the blankets. "That is, madame, of one who loved and of one who did not; and therein, as M. Heine truly remarks, lies the tragedy of existence."
"Demetrius--Constantine." Leah felt that she must come to the point and get rapidly through the interview, if only to escape from the sickening atmosphere. "Katinka accuses me of betraying you."
"Well, madame?"
"I did not. I swear I did not."
"Indeed? Mademoiselle Aksakoff is doubtless mistaken."
"In a way. She wishes to save her father from blame."
"As a good daughter should. Will you explain further, madame?"
"Certainly. I came, of my own free will, to explain. Katinka told me how ill you were, and I could not bear to think you should die believing me to be dishonourable."
"Madame speaks hopefully of my dying. It would please her, perhaps?"
"No. What do you take me for? I never loved you as you wished to be loved; but if M. Aksakoff had not interfered, and we had married, I should have come to love you."
"You speak of what might have been."
"I suppose so. Circumstances are altered. Marriage is out of the question."
"Assuredly, and I am scarcely fit for a bridegroom."
"What is the matter with you?" asked Leah, anxiously.
Demetrius passed over the question. "Besides, Captain Strange informed me that your husband has returned. Madame was doubtless pleased at that marvellous resurrection, so cleverly managed."
"No," said Leah, honestly enough. "I was not; but circumstances made it imperative that Jim should return."
"And for me to travel in Siberia?"
"Blame M. Aksakoff, blame M. Aksakoff," she insisted. "I am innocent."
"Be pleased to observe, madame, that as yet I have brought no accusation against you."
"Katinka acted as your mouthpiece."
"You have not my authority to say that."
"Then I gather that you do not blame me for your exile?"
"How can I with any truth, madame, seeing that yon accuse M. Aksakoff?"
"I do," said Leah, resolutely.
"In that case I regret that Mademoiselle struck the wrong person."
"You know that she struck me?"
"I was informed of it this morning, and express my regret that she acted so foolishly. Did the blow hurt you?"
"It was most painful. I feel it still."
"Your lip is cut, then?"
"Both lips--inside, luckily, so there will be no visible scars. But even now a very little would make them bleed."
Such was the profound egotism of her nature that she expected further sympathy from the man she had reduced to such a condition. But the doctor's stock of polite phrases appeared to be exhausted. In place of a compliment came a hoarse chuckle, like the cry of an early starling. "You appear to approve," said Leah, ironically.
"Pardon; I mentioned before that Mademoiselle, in my humble opinion, was wrong."
"She was very wrong. I am not accustomed to deal with wild beasts."
"Spare me, madame; I owe her so much."
"I owe her nothing except revenge for striking me. But I excuse that because she is ignorant of the truth."
"I am also ignorant, madame."
"You shall hear it now--yes, the absolute truth."
Again came the raucous sound, which might have been a laugh or a groan--Leah could not tell which.
"The truth," murmured the sick man; adding, after a significant pause, "I am waiting, madame."
"I went to Paris with Miss Tallentire," explained the Duchess, beginning anywhere in her hurry, "and Mr. Askew followed."
"Followed you?"
"Certainly not. I always detested the boy--so conceited. He admired Miss Tallentire, and his liking for me was the passing fancy of a shallow nature. To arouse your jealousy, M. Aksakoff put it about that Mr. Askew intended to marry me in Paris. The gossip--and it was merely gossip--came to Mrs. Penworthy's ears. That woman hated me then, and hates me now. To make mischief she told you. You came over to Paris. There, you remember what took place."
"Not at our final meeting. My last memory of your face is seeing it across the tea-table."
"You had a fit of some kind, and M. Aksakoff called up a Dr. Helfmann, who took you away in a cab to be cured. Then I received a letter from you, stating that you were going to Russia. As I fancied you might have settled with M. Aksakoff about your pardon, of course I quite believed it, and--and--I think that is all."
"Did you not know that the letter was forged?"
"No!"
"That the so-called Dr. Helfmann was a spy?"
"No!"
"That the coffee--or rather, that the tea was drugged?"
"No. How could I possibly know that M. Aksakoff was using me as his tool? If the tea--itwastea--well, if he put anything into the tea, I did not see him do it. It was M. Aksakoff who gave you into Dr. Helfmann's charge, when you were insensible. Now, am I to blame?"
"Your explanation is eminently satisfactory, madame."
"And you believe me?"
"It would be impolite to doubt a lady."
Leah was nonplussed. She was manufacturing conversation, and his comments were trivial, if not ironical, as she shrewdly suspected. She could not quite arrive at his real meaning. He avoided answering leading questions, and would neither accept not decline her asseverations.
"I have no more to say," she remarked, with an air of one washing her hands of the whole affair.
Again a deadly silence ensued; again she heard the heavy breathing of the creature hidden under the heaped blankets; again sounded the drowsy lapping of the water and the faint sigh of the wind. This time she resolved to make him speak, so that she might learn precisely what he thought. But the moments passed and no speech came. Finally it did come, in the unemotional voice of one who speaks in his sleep. He discoursed on a subject about which she had no desire to hear.
"Paris--Havre--Kronstadt!" said the slow, drawling, monotonous tone, "and then the weary journey across the Urals. Oh, the cold and the snows and the bitter storms of Siberia! Chains and hunger, dirt and rags; and always--always--the hopeless future. None loved me; none lifted me up; none spoke words of kindness. Loneliness and sorrow and the constant torment of painful memories."
The voice died away in a sob. Leah, desperately anxious to defend herself still further, would have spoken. But her mouth was dry; her lips ached; tremors thrilled her body as the nerves twittered, jumped, and quivered. Over the low bunk she could see the rocking stars as the vessel swung to her anchor. What glimmer of light there was revealed faintly the piled blankets, and nothing more. The face was veiled by almost material shadows. And again, drearily and heavily, rose the thick, muddy voice, without variance in its tones, without the music of feeling. It might have been, and probably was, a voice from the tomb, as it surged sluggishly through the fetid gloom.
"St. Petersburg," announced the toneless voice, "Moscow, and the farce of a trial. The waving of a white-gloved hand, and a courtly bow, to dismiss me into pain and darkness and to a living grave. Nijni-Novgorod, and Mother Volga, who takes us convicts to her breast."
Here came the dry chanting of a weird song which made the listener's flesh creep, and her guilty soul quail. Then again, slowly, wearily, Demetrius began to name the stations of his cross on the way to the calvary of a final prison. "Kazan, Pianybor, Perm, the bleak Urals, that prison wall of the exile; Ekaterinburg, Tiumen, the doorstep to the barren cell. Borka, Dobrouna, Oshalka"--the rough Russian names grated on Leah's ears;--"Yevlevoi and the slow-flowing river, the prison barge, the black bread, the bitter, biting, burning cold; Tobolsk, with its deathly mists and clammy darkness of Egypt; the Charity Song--the weary, weary Miloserdnaya!" He sang another line or two in a cracked voice, and broke out more humanly: "Then the warm sunshine like the smile of the good God, and days of those gentle winds we shall never breathe more. The flowers and the winds, the sunshine and the laughing children. Samarof, Sourgout, Narym;" he paused to gather strength for the crying of a name which issued with a sob of heartfelt agony: "Tomsk--oh, Tomsk! Those long, long days of waiting for what was to be; the horrible mercies of the unjust. Kyrie eleison! Christe eleison! Kyrie eleison!" She saw the convulsive movements of the blankets, and knew that he was making the sign of the cross. After the crying to God and His Son came the protest against the cruelty of man. "The weary prison of Tomsk; the road--the long, horrible road to the ice-bound coast. Sakhalin, the island of pain, the hell of the innocent, and a human soul lost. Christe eleison! A loving, sinning soul for which Thou didst die, lost--lost--lost!"
Leah's nerves ached and shook and shuddered as the account of the vile journey welled forth smoothly like thick oil. With fixed eyes and fascinated ears she took in the terrible Odyssey. After another sobbing pause--the broken creature was crying bitterly--the voice recommenced, droning on one note until Leah felt that she could have screamed if only to vary the sound.
Demetrius spoke of the barren wastes of Sakhalin in the Gulf of Ochotsk, where the freezing straits of Neviski run between mainland and island. He told of obdurate Cossacks, of cruel gaolers, of the treacherous Gilyak natives, who prevent the escape of the mortal damned. A note of emotion crept into the voice, and in its level tones she discerned a faint hope. A smuggled letter, and the assurance that help was at hand; a corrupted warder, a bribed soldier, a black starless night, and a desperate escape over deserts of snow. Then came heart-rending relations of a drifting boat, of suffering and starvation and cold which burnt to the bone. Leah heard of a brave woman--"my love--my love," said the voice tenderly--toiling with a bought Japanese fisherman to bring the tiny shallop to a haven beyond the grip of the merciless Muscovite. The weird tale took her through La Perouse Straits, northward amongst the Kurile Islands, and into the naked lands of Kamchatka. Here again, as she gathered, the fugitives were in danger of recapture; but they fled still further north through the bitter cold, and under a bleak sunless sky, to herd with the Koriaks. The tormented voice droned ever on about these filthy savages, fish-eaters, and hunters of the unclean; it shuddered through accounts of loathsome diseases, and of smoky defiled huts like the hells of Swedenborg. And the man wailed always, ever and again, of the danger of being retaken, of terrible suspense, of shattered nerves, and of the eternal strength of a pure woman's love. The tale ended with painful outbursts of joy at the sight of Strange's tramp standing towards the inhospitable Siberian coast.
"Peace, plenty, warmth, food, safety, kindness, hope, love!" chanted the voice, broken up into almost musical gratitude. Then a pause of infinite meaning, ended by a dry clucking chuckle. "And I lived that I might see you," breathed the man she had cast into the hell he had described. Leah's hair bristled at the roots. The speech was so terribly significant. But her soul still fought against the inevitable punishment, whatever that might be.
"Not my fault," she panted eagerly; "horrible, horrible--but not my fault! Oh, believe--believe me, Constantine."
"You have asserted your innocence before," murmured the sick man, ironically; "and now----"
"Now?" her heart almost stood still, so intensely did she listen.
"We must part for ever."
"But you--you----"
"I devote what remains of my life to the woman who has saved me--to the angel who drew me out of the frozen deeps of hell."
"And--and you--you will say--nothing?"
"This boat leaves here to-night for a place which need not be mentioned. I go out of your life for ever, and silent."
"Oh, thank you--thank you!"
"For what, madame, since you assure me of your innocence?"
Leah felt awkward. She had said too much. "Katinka is so prejudiced that I thought--I thought----"
Her voice died away. The lie would not come forth in the presence of this dying wretch.
"You thought she would be jealous. Ah, no, madame." Demetrius paused and clucked again like a brooding hen. "She permits you to kiss me with a last kiss."
"No!" Leah half rose, and fell again, recoiling with a cry of terror at the prospect of setting the final seal on her treachery, as did Judas in the Garden.
"I beg of you, my first love. One kiss to dismiss me into the silence--to close my mouth for ever and ever."
So he did doubt her; he did not believe. All her lies were discounted; all his conversation was merely ironical and make-believe. He held her in a vice, and release would come only when she submitted to a revolting caress.
"I will not--I dare not," she stammered, shrinking against the wall in an agony of physical fear from an object which a guilty imagination revealed as loathsome to sight and touch; "you--you have no right to----"
"The right of love," said the weary voice.
"You have no proof."
"The cypher letters;" and a lean hand held out a packet, drawn from under the discoloured blankets.
"For one kiss, madame--for one kiss."
"Ugh!" groaned Leah, and snatched eagerly.
Packet and hand disappeared swiftly, and the voice whistled in a jeering manner. "One kiss, madame, one kiss."
She still fought. "My mouth is sore. I am----"
"One kiss--one kiss--the last and the best; or--or----"
Leah, writhing against the wall, gasped soundlessly. In that last word there was the sound of a terrible threat. It was the knell of respectability, of ease and luxury, and of all that makes life worth living. A single caress would buy the evidence; a touch of her mouth, and she would be free for ever and ever and ever.
"One kiss, then," she muttered; and with all her soul crying strenuously against the horror, she tottered forward. "One;" her lips sought the place where a mouth might be supposed to be waiting. Two arms flew up and gripped her.
She could not scream, for the arms dragged her down, belted her like iron bands. Her mouth was on his, his lips were on hers. She writhed, silent and agonised, in the horrible caress, in the abominable embrace, trying to free herself in vain. Demetrius placed his lean hand on the back of her head and absolutely ground her mouth against his own. She could feel the wounds break and bleed, sanctifying the kiss of Judas.
His arms relaxed, she flung backward, and the long-withheld scream broke forth shrill and vehement. As if in answer to that terrible summons, Katinka tore open the door and entered with a smoky paraffin lamp. With one hand the girl thrust the shaking, sobbing woman forward, with the other held the lamp towards the face peering out of the blankets.
"Oh, my God!" shrieked Leah, and sprang from the cabin, pursued by the cackling of broken laughter.
She made for the deck--for the side--for anywhere, to be out of the sight of that face; that face which would haunt her till she died. Strange, in silence, handed her, sobbing and whimpering, down the black side, where the boat received her. She dropped in a heap, and beside her dropped from Katinka's hand a packet of letters. Above from an open port-hole came clucking, cackling, chuckling laughter, insanely gleeful, and the silent stars of God shone over land and sea.
So Leah won after all. She went out with a definite purpose, and returned with that purpose achieved; yet not fully, since what she desired had been flung to her as a bone to a dog. In the panic-stricken flight from the field she carried with her the spoils of victory and something less desirable. The price of her good name, the security of her position, the entire triumph--these, as she well knew, had been gained by shameful self-surrender. Indeed, it could scarcely be called a victory, seeing that she had succumbed to the masterful brutality of her enemy. Nevertheless--and she derived comfort from the thought--it could not be termed a defeat. Her social glory yet flamed unextinguished; her character could not be smirched, and she could yet hold up her head to flout the found-out of her sex. But something bitter spoiled the flavour of these sweets. She had lost her belief in the fetish; its spell of good luck was broken; her nerve was gone, and with it self-respect. All she desired was to hide herself amongst familiar surroundings, that their very familiarity might fence in her quailing soul from impossible danger. And that the danger could be so described by her intellect revealed a demoralised will.
The cypher letters attesting her share in the conspiracy she destroyed by fire. They were genuinely those she had written, and the number was correct, so, when their ashes floated up the chimney, Leah drew the long, deep, relieved breath of one whose chains have been struck off. Yet, even at the moment of release, she shuddered to the core of her being. The ghost of a futile crime was laid, but the ghost might return. Demetrius had truly parted with all tangible evidence, and his unsubstantiated story would be whiffed away as too romantic for belief. Moreover, M. Aksakoff, for the sake of his own good name, and that of his Government, would swear to her innocence of this gross intrigue. She was safe--absolutely, entirely, and wholly safe. The world would never know how she had capered on the verge of an abyss, or how nearly she had missed her footing. But something--her conscience probably--told her that an unseen Judge was summing up her delinquencies; that she was being weighed in the balance and would be found wanting, even though her kingdom did not pass from her. This Judge, impartial, terribly quiet, severely righteous, might have been God; and He was God, although she refused recognition. Her tormented soul inspired her with the dread of an all-seeing and condemning eye; but she resolutely declined to admit the Maker, the Judge, or the Unseen in any way. Shadows should not frighten her, for these were not of the eating, drinking, merry-making world. All the same, shadows, elusive and unexpected, did strike terror to her guilty heart, and she reluctantly knew herself to be a broken woman. In those earlier hours of safety this knowledge was very insistent.
The week of her retirement passed pleasantly enough. She doctored her bruised lips, mended their torn skin, and argued occasionally with her shameful soul. The quiet life of silent hours in the midst of civilised balms partially restored her courage, but not as entirely as she could wish. Piecing her broken nerves together as best she could, she strove to remount the pinnacle of supreme and self-sufficient egotism whence she had fallen. But Humpty-Dumpty could not be set up again, try as she might to replace him. During those brooding hours Leah recovered much, but not all. The week's end found her cured of the skin-deep blow, and outwardly the same insolent, radiant beauty of an adoring world. But she knew herself to be a changed being; the pantheress had become a hare, although less innocent. The sword of her tongue was still sharp, but the shield of self-righteousness was broken, and a keen-eyed antagonist sufficiently assertive could have reduced her to the same moral pulp that the interview with Demetrius had left her. Woe to the vanquished indeed! What remained but that she should receive the wooden foil of retirement from Destiny and leave the arena for ever. Her soul protested against this tame submission, so with indomitable courage she braced herself to further battle. With the world, that is, not with Demetrius. His abominable kiss had sapped her forces. She could face social enemies, she could defy the Eternal, she could encounter the fiends of hell, but not the man who had flung her into the dust--who had trailed her, and was still trailing her, at his chariot wheels. Certainly he had steamed into the unknown, and she would never behold him more. But his black influence remained and made itself felt at untoward moments.
Jim paid his promised visit almost at the end of her seclusion, and was disposed to be disagreeable on the plea that his wife had lied unnecessarily. Being truthful himself, when there was nothing to be gained by swerving from the path of rectitude, Jim abhorred a wasted fib, and proceeded to condemn Leah for shooting an aimless arrow from her mental quiver. It was the most pensive hour of the summer twilight when Jim began his sermon, and he preached in his wife's sitting-room. Darby sat beside Joan, who lay languidly on a sofa. What a perfect and touching picture of connubial felicity! If only a reporter of backstair gossip had been present to describe this middle-class domesticity of these great leaders of fashion, Brixton might have learned an edifying lesson from Belgravia.
"Now I do call it hard on a fellow," complained the Duke--"jolly hard--that you can't talk straight, Leah."
"If I did you would scarcely feel flattered. What is it now?"
"Aksakoff! Says he was never near Southend. Swore till all was blue that he'd never set eyes on that girl for months an' months."
"A sad deprivation for so affectionate a father."
"Well, then, he wants to know where she is."
"How should I know?" replied the Duchess, indifferently. "She chose to remain at Southend, and I returned here alone."
"What were you doin' at Southend?"
"That is my business, Jim!"
"Mine also. You said something that wasn't true."