CHAPTER III.THE STORY OF CAIN.
Aftera moment’s thought the physician walked on, motioning to me to follow him.
“This is no place for private converse,” he said; “when we are in my house, I can answer you. It was of the Boyar Ramodanofsky I was about to speak, and your question startled me; but mayhap it was accidental. At any rate, follow me, and I will endeavor to satisfy your curiosity.”
I was content to follow, since I was assured of hearing something of the boyar and his beautiful charge. I did not doubt Von Gaden’s knowledge of them; his profession gained him universal admittance, and he had been a physician of the czar’s, which was an endorsement readily accepted by the nobility.
The streets outside the Kremlin were packed with people; the crowd within had dispersed, and Biélui-gorod was filled with the overflow.I noticed more than once that curious and, I fancied, suspicious glances were cast at the physician, as we walked rapidly along; but he was apparently unconscious of them, although his keen eye was ever so observant. Here and there were knots of soldiers talking eagerly together; and at one corner we witnessed a curious example of the smoldering ire of the Streltsi against their own commanders. An officer of the Pyzhof regiment was riding towards the Kremlin, evidently on an errand of importance. As he came abreast of us, a woman hissed him, and a cry rose suddenly, as if at a preconcerted signal,—
“Down with the officers! Down with oppression and extortion! Give us our pay!” And the stones flew like hail.
The officer, a young fellow, taken unawares, was evidently alarmed, and dashed off through the crowd without offering any remonstrance, his retreat bringing laughter and jeers from the mob. Von Gaden quickened his step, saying to me in a low tone:—
“It is an evil sign; the insubordination has reached serious proportions, and there is no master hand upon the rein. We have had two benevolent rulers,—his late majesty, and the Czar Alexis; we need now another, Ivan theTerrible. The rabble is breaking its bonds, and woe to Russia’s rulers when the reckoning day comes!”
“You see it, then, as plainly as I do?” I said. “This election to-day seemed idle mockery; they have set up a boy to rule the Russias, and they can’t control the rabble of Moscow!”
“No one can foresee the end,” Von Gaden replied gravely; “the feuds are so bitter that every man feels his life to be in peril. The Naryshkins and their adherents all wore armor under their robes to-day. The patriarch turned from the side of the dead czar to ask the boyars who should rule over them, and they referred him to the free voters of the Moscovite State!”
“Le roi est mort, vive le roi!” I said dryly.
“Ay, it is ever so!” replied Von Gaden.
We had reached his home, and he ushered me in with that gentle courtesy which was one of his characteristics.
“I will take you up to my den,” he said, smiling. “I would talk freely to you, and there we can be undisturbed.”
He led me up a spiral stair, and opening a low door at the top, we entered a long, narrow room directly under the roof, and lighted only by a huge skylight. As I glanced about me, Irealized that the place would furnish an admirable pretext for an accusation of familiarity with the black arts, far more plausible too than the one preferred against the book of algebra belonging to Matveief’s son. The room was bare of all luxury, furnished only in the plainest and most meager fashion, and fitted up for a laboratory. The skylight illumined the center of the apartment, leaving the corners gloomy; and out of the shadows, here and there, grinned a whitened skull, and there were various other fragments of the human anatomy about the place. The doctor’s instruments, keen and polished, were in evidence, and heavy volumes of science were piled from floor to roof, in ponderous stacks. There were many phials filled with various colored fluids, and a keen aromatic odor issued from a black kettle simmering over the fire, suspended on a hook and chain from the brick arch above the hearth. It was the very spot in which to conjure up a familiar spirit, and there was something of the same mystery and interest about the dignified figure of the Hebrew. His keen eye divined my thoughts.
“You see the palpable evidence of my nefarious schemes, M. le Vicomte,” he said, smiling. “Here is the place to brew a poisonfor a czar. Alas! there is no foe so dangerous as ignorant superstition, and the average Russian of to-day is even more superstitious than the rest of the world. There is one man in that court, though, who is in advance of his times; one man who is equal to taking the helm, though the last one likely to be called, if the election of to-day hold.”
I glanced at him interrogatively; I always liked to hear Von Gaden’s opinions. He continued at once,—
“I mean Prince Basil Galitsyn,” he said; “he is still a young man, but a born leader.”
“All his attachment is for the Miloslavsky party though,” I replied.
“Ay, he is for the Miloslavskys. In fact, there is a strong friendship between him and the Czarevna Sophia; for all that, he may yet be called to the helm, for who knows what will come?”
“You know the young czar,” I said; “what do you think of him?”
“Peter Alexeivitch is still a child,” Von Gaden replied slowly; “but I have observed him closely, for in him, I know, we see Russia’s future ruler, whoever reigns during his minority. His succession seems beyond dispute, in the long run. He is neither like hisamiable father, Alexis, nor like the late czar, Feodor. He is a young barbarian,—fierce, cruel, daring. The boy is different from other boys. I think that Russia has much to fear, and more to hope, from that young Tartar.”
I laughed. “It is well that these walls are without ears,” I said, “else what treason would this sound in Moscow!”
“Ay, treason, always treason!” returned Von Gaden, bitterly. “If I cure the czar, I am a magician; if I fail to cure him, I am a poisoner. It is, therefore, only a choice of evils.”
He stooped down and stirred the fire, the red light glowing on his features. I had put aside my cloak and was standing watching him. He laid down the poker and looked up.
“Be seated,” he said, courteously, signing to me to take the only chair in the room, while he sat down opposite, on a crooked-legged stool. “I dare say you think I have forgotten Ramodanofsky, but I have not. It is an evil story, and I have never told it; but it is borne in upon me that I may not have long to live, and I do not care to die with that secret in my bosom,—although I have many others,” he added, smiling. He was leaning a little forward, his clasped hands resting heavily onhis knees, his back being to the light, and only the red glow of the fire illumining his features.
“Your profession makes you a natural repository of secrets,” I replied. “My own nature is too careless for such a work as yours; I should bungle both with my patients and their confidences.”
“It might be far otherwise if you had been trained to tend the ill and the dying, M. de Brousson,” he rejoined quietly. “Every profession molds its neophytes. You have been taught to put people out of the world, I to help to keep them in it.”
“The nobler work,” I said courteously, although I had no thought of drawing a comparison between my sword and his lance.
“I thank you,” Von Gaden answered dryly; “but I know well what you of noble blood think of the surgeons who sew up the slashes made by your blades. But no matter. I am moved to tell you the story of Ramodanofsky. I will recount the whole affair; part of it—the last part—from my own experience, the rest I have gathered sometimes by inquiry, sometimes by accident. There were two brothers of the name, the elder Feodor, and the younger Vladimir, whom you have seen, both old men now,if both had lived. They were of different mothers. Feodor was the son of a Polish woman, the old boyar’s first wife; Vladimir is pure Russian, or Tartar, which you please. Feodor was the favorite, and inherited the estates and the wealth, while Vladimir came off but poorly. The two men hated each other; the tie of a common fatherhood never bound them; yet I believe that the Boyar Feodor Ramodanofsky was just to his half-brother, who was, in a way, dependent upon him; but you can imagine how the father’s discrimination in favor of the elder rankled with a man like Vladimir. Feodor went to France at one time, and while there, married a beautiful young Frenchwoman, of noble family, and connected, I believe, on her mother’s side with the Polish mother of Feodor. He brought home his bride, and in a year or so a child was born to them, to their great disappointment not a boy, but a girl. Vladimir was then serving in the army, fighting the Don Cossacks, at the time of Stenka Razin’s insurrection, for it was during the reign of Alexis the Debonair. When he returned, he was poorer and more reckless than ever. Whether he loved Feodor’s wife or not, it is hard to tell, but he began to make love to her whenever his brother was absent. MarieRamodanofsky was a noble woman, I knew her; her daughter has inherited her beauty, along with her father’s spirit. She resented Vladimir’s treachery, but she dreaded to tell her husband, who was a passionate and jealous man, and who hated his brother for a hundred evil traits that he knew, without adding this one. But at last her position became unendurable, and she told her husband. There is no doubt that a bitter scene ensued, and the boyar, in the first flush of his anger and jealousy, must have falsely accused her of encouraging his brother; when he left her to go in search of the traitor, her attendants found her in a deathlike swoon. Meanwhile, Feodor followed Vladimir to the Kremlin, and finding him on the Red Staircase, a fight ensued. Feodor was the more powerful man of the two, but he was blind with rage, and it is said that Homyak, the court dwarf, who was patronized by Vladimir, seeing the fight going against the latter, tripped up the elder brother, and he fell from the top to the bottom of the Red Staircase, the blood flowing from a gash in his cheek. I was in the palace, attending the Czarevna Sophia, and was summoned to the wounded man. Vladimir had disappeared, and Homyak gave a garbled version of the fight. It had reached the ears ofthe czar, and Alexis was not a little angered; already I think his mind was poisoned by the tales that later ruined Feodor, for soon after this he lost favor, and it was bruited about that he was a traitor to the czar. It was fifteen months afterwards when I was summoned to take care of Madame Ramodanofsky; she died when her little son was born. The boy lived only two days, and they were buried together. Feodor felt his loss bitterly; he was then under a heavy cloud, and threatened, I knew, with exile; for I have known most of the secrets of the court for many years. No man seemed to be able to lay his finger on the boyar’s accuser, but I never doubted that it was Vladimir.
“It was the week after the wife and baby died that I was entering the courtyard of Ramodanofsky’s house. Homyak was just ahead of me; he seemed to be Feodor’s evil genius. There was quite a little crowd in the court; all the serfs were there, and in the center of the place, in a pool of blood, lay Feodor, stricken down by the hand of an unknown assassin, so they said. He was not dead, and I had him carried into the house, and bound up his wounds; I thought he would live, but I was not positive, and had to leave him still in a state of semi-consciousness. As Icrossed the courtyard, Homyak plucked at my cloak. I have always hated the grinning creature, and made a motion to shake him off. ‘How is the boyar?’ he asked eagerly; ‘He will live,’ I retorted curtly. The dwarf laughed. ‘Vladimir Sergheievitch is not as good a swordsman as I thought,’ he said. ‘It was that villain, then?’ I exclaimed too eagerly, for Homyak took alarm, and rambled off into one of his fanciful tales of which one can make nothing. The next day, before I could see my patient, Vladimir Sergheievitch Ramodanofsky appeared at the palace to announce the death of his brother, and was closeted with the czar. I never saw even the corpse of Feodor. I protested as openly as I dared against the foul play that, I was sure, was taking place, but there was no room for complaints. Vladimir’s tongue is oiled, and he had the ear of the council; he laid before them certain treasonable papers purporting to be his brother’s, and the upshot was, that the dead boyar’s memory was an ill savor in the nostrils of the court, and his honors and emoluments went to Vladimir. If Feodor Sergheievitch had lived, he would have been sent into exile. His little daughter was turned over to the guardianship of the fiend who had endeavored to ruin hermother and had murdered her father. The child, fortunately, was ignorant of it all, and has grown up in her uncle’s household; and as he has no children, will probably inherit her own, in the end. She is rich even now, for the czar had the justice to see that she was not robbed of all her patrimony.”
I had listened with keen interest, because I foresaw the end of the story.
“This Boyar Ramodanofsky, then, has no children?” I said. “And the young lady with him?”
“Is Zénaïde Feodorovna Ramodanofsky,” returned Von Gaden. “She has inherited her mother’s beauty, and is more French than Russian.”
“Is it possible that she can be either happy or safe in such guardianship?” I asked, my mind full of the pale and tearful face in front of the Cathedral of the Assumption.
Von Gaden shook his head thoughtfully.
“It is impossible to read the riddle of Vladimir’s conduct towards her,” he said. “If I thought the man had a conscience, I should say it was troubled with remorse, for he has always seemed just in his treatment of his niece. You know the Russian household is peculiar, but it is more liberal than in the days when the ‘Domotróï’[4]was composed, and the Ramodanofsky home had been Polish in aspect since the days of Feodor’s mother, and his wife had made it French. Zénaïde has been far better educated than the average Russian girl, and has had a Frenchwoman with her for many years; so she speaks Polish and French as readily as Russian. Until lately, there has been apparent accord between the uncle and niece; but now that the boyar is anxious to arrange a marriage for her, I hear that she has developed her father’s spirit, and is likely to resist her uncle’s authority, as no other Russian girl would dare to do. A young maid is an ill thing to guide!” Von Gaden added, with a smile.
“I honor her for her resistance, since I believe I know the chosen bridegroom;” and I told the Jew of the scene in the Kremlin.
“Viatscheslav Naryshkin?” said the physician, thoughtfully. “Yes, it may be so. Ramodanofsky is a close adherent of the Naryshkins. I think the Czarevna Sophia either knows or suspects something ill of him. You know she was much with the late czar, and learned all the little intrigues that had been handed down from her father’s court to that ofFeodor. Viatscheslav is indeed an evil fate for a pure young girl like Zénaïde Feodorovna.”
The fire was dying down, and we both sat staring at the embers, Von Gaden shading his face with his hand.
“I have always wanted to set it right,” he said musingly; “I have always intended to do something. If I die now, the secret will not die with me.”
“Was it of Feodor Ramodanofsky that Homyak spoke to-day?” I asked, suddenly remembering the conversation.
The physician nodded.
“I do not know what Homyak had to do with it,” he said, “but he has an evil conscience; some day he will confess.”