CHAPTER XII
WHEN LOVE WAS BORN
The streets of St. Petersburg, the city itself, nihilism, Russia, the czar had ceased to exist for me, however. Whatever she may have seen upon the street that had brought that startled cry to her lips, and had made her turn about and grasp my arm, had also brought into her countenance an expression of such overwhelming and overpowering concern for me, that I knew with a perfect knowledge in that instant, that Zara loved me.
Have you ever been swayed by an impulse that is utterly beyond your control, and before which all other considerations degenerate to such utter insignificance as not to exist at all?
It was such an one that controlled me then.
As she drew me toward the window, and would have directed my gaze through it, her own eyes held unflinchingly to mine, and mine held hers with a compelling power which she did not seek to resist, and could not have controlled, even if she had made the effort.
Whatever it may have been, out there in the street, that had alarmed her, she forgot it, and my arms were around her, her lithe, sinuous, pulsing body was crushed madly against my own, and our lips had met before either of us realized it. We had mutually recognized the strange and overwhelming instinct of love, that had asserted its control over both at the self-same instant. I forgot the world, the flesh and the devil, the czar, Russia, and nihilism, and she forgot even that uppermost terror that was tearing at her heart, in that supreme moment of the rapturous recognition of love.
We were unconscious of the fact that we were standing directly before the window, where we must have been for the moment in full view of persons passing in the street; we had forgotten everything, save each other.
We were both silent; there was no occasion for words; our souls were speaking to each other in a language of their own, God-given and complete, which leaves nothing to be understood, which comprehends all things.
In such supreme moments as that one was, heart speaks to heart with a complete understanding which passeth all human knowledge, and which can be understood only by the two who are most concerned, and by God, who created such impulses.
Presently we were back again beside the low divan. She was seated upon the edge of it, and I was beside her, with one knee on the floor, clasping both her hands in one of mine, while the other still encircled her body, holding her tightly against me in that rhapsody of love which overawes all sense of understanding.
Her head rested lightly upon my shoulder; stray tresses of her hair brushed against my temple and my cheek; her half-parted lips, glowing like newly opened rose-buds, never attained a distance of more than an inch from mine, and for the most part they were together, as lightning conductors of every thrill that pulsed through her being and mine.
When our lips were not in contact, our eyes were; they were gazing into the utmost depths of each other's soul, reading and understanding all that was mutually expressed, charmed and fascinated by the beauteous panoramic scenes which flittered in love-phantoms past our prophetic vision.
"My love! my love!" she murmured over and over again, as if it were all she could utter, and as if with the use of that expression all things were said and done; and I replied as inevitably and comprehensively.
It sounds inane enough in the telling of it, but meaningless phrases and abrupt expressions may, at certain moments in our lives, express everything.
Time became a blank; the world was blotted out; existence was only an incident; we, ourselves, with our bodies, our energies, our capabilities, had become mere atoms in the immensity of that greatest of all God's creations, Love.
There were murderers waiting in the street to do me to death; I thanked God for their presence, since because of it, Zara had been brought to the confession and expression of her love for me. She was a nihilist queen and she had played with the affections of men in order to stupefy them to her purposes, as demanded by the cause she served; but I also thanked God for that, because its consideration and my deep resentment had made plain to me the real power and passion of this abundantly glorious woman, now swayed by only one impulse, love for me.
But, however enthralling they may be, all impulses must have an end. However complete may be love's expression, there is a limit to its continuance; I mean that silent form of expression which proclaims itself only in soul communion.
It was a period of almost utter unconsciousness, since we were both conscious of only one thing while it lasted; but the reaction came at last while she was still relaxed in my embrace, and while yet the mystifying magic induced by contact with her, enveloped me, body and soul.
"Zara," I said, half whispering the word now so unutterably sweet to me, "you will leave Russia now—with me?"
The question brought us both to our senses, with a start, and my princess drew away from me a little, and said, with a whimsical smile:
"A little while ago, my love, you ordered me to leave Russia, alone; now you order me away again, but under guard. I think I will obey you in this last order you have given me. Whenever you will it, I will go."
"And leave behind you all that you have hitherto thought so much about, Zara?" I asked, brought back by her statement to a realization of the conditions by which we were surrounded. She replied without hesitation, and with a finality that was complete:
"Yes."
Ah, what maps of the world have been changed by that word yes. What histories have been written because of its utterance, even in a whispered tone, as hers was then.
"And your nihilists?" I asked her, still intent upon an even more complete capitulation on her part.
"Yes," she repeated.
"And your brother? The cause you have served so intently? The purpose of your life? Everything, Zara?"
"Yes," she said a third time, and still with that same emphasis of finality which could not be misunderstood, and for which there was no qualification.
I was silent and so was she; but after a little I heard her murmuring in a tone so low that it seemed as if I scarcely heard it, notwithstanding the fact that every word was quite distinct.
"I will leave everything for you, my love, for you are all the world to me. There is nothing else now, but you. Nihilism and the cause it upholds, has sunk into utter insignificance, and has become a mere point in the history of my life, like a punctuating period that is placed at the end of a written sentence. Nihilists, great and small, have become mere atoms in the mystery of creation, and they can have no further influence upon my life. The czar of all the Russias is no more a personage to me now, than the merest black dwarf of central Africa, and Russia itself has diminuated to a mere island in the sea of eternity, a speck on the map of the infinite creation. You, Dubravnik——" She paused there and smiled into my eyes with an inimitable gesture of tenderness as she reached upward with her right hand and brushed back the hair from my temples—"I think I shall always call you Dubravnik. The name is yours, as I have known you, and as Dubravnik you are mine, as I am yours."
My reply to this was not a spoken word, and it needs no explanation.
"You, Dubravnik," she continued from the point where she so sweetly interrupted herself, "have become the universe to me, now. You are the infinite space which comprehends all."
It was sweet to hear her express herself so; sweeter still to know, that comprehensive as it was, it went but a little way toward explaining all that she would have liked to say; and sweetest of all to realize that she also exactly expressed my thought toward her, and that she knew she did so.
There was a long silence after that, broken only by her breathing, by a murmured word of caress, by a gesture of endearment or an occasional sigh; but I brought it to an end presently by asking a question which brought her out of her reverie with a start of affright.
"What was it, Zara, that you saw through the window when——" I did not complete the sentence. It was not necessary. She understood me instantly and with the understanding there returned to her a realization of all the terrors by which we were at that moment surrounded. We could love each other with a rhapsodical completeness, in perfect security, so long as we remained together inside that room; but beyond the walls of Zara's palatial home death stalked grimly, waiting, waiting, waiting, for the moment to strike.
She withdrew from my embrace, slowly and tentatively, but surely, until we no longer touched each other, and she gazed appealingly into my eyes while the flush of love forsook her cheeks and brow, giving place to a pallor of uncertainty and dread for me.
"I had forgotten," she murmured.
"Then continue to forget, my Zara," I whispered.
"No, we must not forget; we must remember." She raised her hand and pointed toward the window. "Out there, Dubravnik, death waits for you. I had forgotten. I had forgotten."
With a start she gained her feet and stood for a moment palpitatingly uncertain, clasping and unclasping her hands, while her bosom rose and fell in this stress of an utterly new emotion.
One whom she loved was threatened, now. The maternal instinct of womankind is never more prominent than when it is exercised in the protection of the man she loves, and who is destined to be the father of her offspring. It is a grand and a noble sentiment, and no man lives who will ever comprehend it; but when a man loves as I loved then, he can appreciate its fullness, even though he may not understand it; he can recognize its existence and presence, even though it would be impossible for him to define it.
And it was the maternal instinct that governed her in that moment of terrorized realization of the dangers which threatened me.
I had suddenly become her charge and care. She saw herself as responsible for the conditions that menaced me, and she was like a wild partridge sheltering its brood, and which will not hesitate to face any peril for their protection.
I was always more or less indifferent, if not insensible, to danger. It may not necessarily be bravery that refuses to recognize perils; it may be an instinctive quality of dominance, and self-confidence which is convinced of its power to overcome them.
I rose and stood beside her, putting my arm around her as we faced the window from the opposite side of the room.
"Out there lies danger, Zara," I said smiling, "but here, in this room, dwells happiness."
"There can be no happiness with death waiting for you outside," she said, with sharp decision.
"Zara, my love!"
She wheeled upon me and clasped her hands together behind my neck, looking up at me with trouble-shrouded eyes, and with brows that were slightly corrugated by the perplexities of the moment.
"Listen to me, sweetheart," she said, with her face so close to mine that I had all I could do to refrain from interrupting her. "We must not belittle the perils that lie yonder. There are two lives in danger now, for if anything should happen to you, it would kill me also. I am selfish now, Dubravnik, in my concern for you, for after all it is myself whom I would protect, through you. But we must not belittle the danger. I know that you are brave and daring; that you have no fear. I realize that you view with contempt the perils that beset you, but oh, my love, suppose that you should not escape."
"Why suppose it, Zara? I am here; the danger is there. We need not anticipate it. Let us leave it to be met at the proper moment, forgetting for this once, that it exists."
"No, no, we must control ourselves. We have been children for an hour or more, forgetful of all things save love; but now let us be what we are, a man and a woman who have perils to face."
"And who, I trust, have the courage to meet them, Zara."
"Ay, courage; but courage alone does not always accomplish the sought for end. Courage alone is not inevitably competent to meet and overcome conditions. And we need more than courage, Dubravnik; we need resource."
"Resource is something with which we are both moderately well provided," I suggested, smiling, and still refusing to accept her words as seriously as she intended them.
She stamped her foot impatiently upon the rug, and frowned a little, with a touch of petulance in her manner that was the most bewitching thing I had yet seen about her.
"Do be your own self for a moment," she commanded me, withdrawing from my restraining arm and stepping away out of my reach.
"How can I be myself, when I see and realize only you?" I bantered her.
Then came another transition almost as startling as it was complete.
She threw herself bodily forward into my embrace, clasping her clinging arms about me, while she buried her beautiful face between my chin and shoulder and burst into a passion of sobs which convulsed her so utterly that I was alarmed.
I had tried her too far with my bantering attitude, and my apparent indifference to a threatening and terrible fate.
"Zara!" I said. "My love!"
But she only sobbed on and on, and I held her crushed against me until the storm should pass, knowing that a great calm would succeed it, and that her present expression of emotion was only the safety valve for all that had passed between us since the incident when our lips met for the first time.
CHAPTER XIII
LOVE WILL FIND A WAY
We crossed to the window together, and stood looking through it upon the snow clad streets of the city. The storm of the preceding day and night had entirely cleared away, leaving only the inevitable traces of its violence.
As we stood there, Zara pulled the lace curtains between us and the window, so that we were screened from view, while we were enabled, ourselves, to see with perfect distinctness, up and down the thoroughfare against which her home was fronted.
It might have been a Sunday morning, so peaceful and quiet was the scene, and so purely white was everything, in its covering of snow, while the crisp atmosphere of that cold but brilliant Winter day, sparkled and glinted in the sunshine as if thousands of microscopic diamonds were glistening there.
A solitary policeman passed into our view and out of it again, abritzskarushed past an adjacent corner with the horse at galloping speed; a child played with its father for a moment, within our range of vision, and then disappeared; a fur clad pedestrian ran up the steps of a nearby residence, and passed inside of it; all these trivial incidents of observation, came and went, while we stood there, leaving behind them no impression save one of peace, quiet and security. Yet they impressed themselves upon my memory indelibly, and I can see before me even now, the vision of that afternoon in St. Petersburg, with the clinging right hand of my beloved one resting upon my shoulder, with my left arm about her warm and pulsing body, with love, in all its transcendent qualities, dominating all things real and unreal, and filling my heart, and soul, and my intelligence, with a perfection of blissful content which words cannot describe, and which may never be understood save by him who has experienced it.
What terror had Zara seen through that window, that had startled her so, just before we discovered and confessed our mutual love? Whatever it may have been, no evidence of it remained, to suggest disquiet in my own present sense of security. There was nothing there to menace me, and even though Zara's brother Ivan, and others of his kind, fanatics all, in their nihilistic tendencies, wild beasts in their blood lusts, fiends in their methods, as they were—whatever they might threaten, seemed small indeed to me, in that moment of ecstasy. For it was a moment of ecstasy; the word "moment" being measured by the rule of space, limitless and unconfined.
Zara did not know who and what I was, save only that I was a man, and her lover. Beyond that, her imagination had not travelled, and her desires had not sought.
She did not understand that I was at the head of a great fraternity, organized and established by myself, and that I had under my control, if not obedient to my direct command, several hundred individuals within the limit of that city, who would serve me instantly, and who would fight to the death for me if there were need.
It was to be regretted that I had gone to the home of the Princess Zara to keep my appointment that day, with so little thought of the dangers I might have to encounter before I should leave it again. It would have been so easy to arrange for adequate protection, and to have had at that very moment, when I was gazing through the lace curtained window, assistance ready at hand in the shape of men prepared to answer to any signal I might have agreed upon. A word dropped to O'Malley at his café, a sign made to big Tom Coyle, a note in cipher to Canfield, an indication to anyone of my trusted lieutenants, would have placed about me at that very moment, an environment of protection adequate to cope with any difficulty that might arise.
But I had not foreseen the present circumstance sufficiently to be prepared for it in that manner.
Zara and I were practically alone in that great house, save for the servants it contained; and they were not to be counted upon in any case, no matter what form individual effort against us might take.
I was conscious, too, while we stood there so silently together, of the new responsibility I had taken upon myself during the love scene that had just passed; and I was suddenly aware of the danger which threatened my beloved, through me.
I did not realize it until that instant. I had thought, selfishly enough, only of what she had said about my own peril. I had remembered only that I was the object of a planned assassination, because some one whom I had not discovered at the time, had overheard the interview in the garden to which I had been a witness the preceding night, and had also listened to the one that followed it, between Zara and me.
The thrill of alarm that convulsed me, when the full realization of this aspect of the affair came home to me, was startling and paralyzing. Whatever the friends of nihilism might do to me now, would have its crushing effect upon her, also. Nothing could touch me, that would not injure her. We had become one, indeed, in the sense of being so absorbed in each other, so blended in soul and in thought, that whatever affected one, must act with redoubled power upon the other.
Judged from the standpoint of the nihilists themselves, there was no doubt that they were logical enough in their determination to killme. From their view of the case, I was merely a spy, or at least a prospective one, who had overheard a confidence delivered by the Princess Zara de Echeveria, which placed her so absolutely in my power that I held her life, as the saying goes, in the hollow of my hand; and they could not know, would never guess, that now we had learned to love each other, and that she was dearer and sweeter to me than all else in the world.
They would regard me—they must now regard me, as being like other men of their knowledge, who would see in Zara only a beautiful and attractive woman, young and gorgeous, who was suddenly fallen into my power, almost as absolutely as if she were made my slave. What personal sacrifices could I not demand of her, if I were indeed like those other men I have mentioned? What indignities could I not visit upon her, claiming my right to do so as the possessor of her secret, and threatening, not alone her own undoing, but the death of her cause, if she should dare to deny me?
Somewhere out there in the snow, Zara's brother Ivan was waiting and watching, and although I did not now feel that his affection for her included many of the self sacrificing qualities that a brother should have for a sister, he was nevertheless her blood kin, and without doubt he had loaded his pistol with a bullet for the man whom he believed would have it in his power to crush that beautiful sister to the earth, even to the point of literal seduction. For judged from the nihilists' standpoint again, they understood Zara to be one who would not hesitate at any sacrifice, in defense of the cause she served.
"It does not look as if danger, and even death, lurked somewhere yonder in the bright sunshine, Dubravnik," she said to me in a low tone, after we had stood for a long time in utter silence, together.
"No," I replied.
"It is a peaceful scene," she went on in a dreamy sort of manner, staring into the street, and with a half smile upon her lips. "It looks as if we might put on our furs and wraps, and go abroad together, without the least thought of danger, does it not?"
"Yes, Zara."
"And yet——" she raised one hand and pointed—"probably just around that corner, yonder, or behind one of the others, there are waiting men, who are intent upon your destruction, no matter what the consequences to themselves may be. It is awful to contemplate." She shuddered. "I cannot bring myself to believe that it is really true; and yet I know it to be so."
She turned to me with a swift gesture, and continued.
"Oh, Dubravnik, what shall we do? What shall be done to escape the death that threatens you and me? Tell me! Tell me what can be done? The condition is not the same, now, as it was. Everything is different since you kissed me. This world in which we live, is a new world, but we must nevertheless face the conditions of that old one we have deserted. What shall we do? What shall be done?"
I was silent, not because I hesitated to answer her, not because I really at that moment had no answer to give her, but because I was, myself, intently thinking upon the very problem she had suggested.
"What shall be done?"
Presently, with a slow and methodical motion, she withdrew from me again, and returned to the divan, which had been the scene of our awakening love, calling upon me to follow her as she went; and I stood before her, looking down into her eyes up-turned to mine, waiting for her to speak. I knew that she had hit upon some solution of the difficulty, and was about to present it to me. I don't think that it occurred to me to consider seriously whatever she might suggest, even then, for I had not for a moment lost confidence in my entire ability to free both of us from the dangerous environment; but I delighted to hear the sound of her voice. I loved to drink in her words, as she uttered them. I was enthralled in watching the play of expression upon her features while she talked; if she had rendered me a dissertation upon any theme which absorbed her, my interest would have been the same; I was overwhelmed in love.
"There is only one way; only one," she said, unconsciously repeating words she had used once before.
"Yes?" I replied, mindful only of the fact that she had spoken; unmindful of the import of what she said.
"Only one way," Zara repeated. "You must join the nihilists. You must take the oath."
I shook my head with emphasis, brought back suddenly to the intent of her words.
"It is impossible, Zara," I said.
"You must do it, Dubravnik."
"No."
"I say that you must do it. You must take the oath. You must become a nihilist. It is the only way. I will send a servant from the house, with a message which will bring two or three of the leaders here, and you shall take the oath."
She started to her feet again, reaching toward the bellcord, and I had to spring after her, and seize her arm, in order to restrain the act she was about to commit.
"No, Zara," I said, and forced her gently back to the couch, compelling her to be seated, and this time dropping down beside her, and putting my arm around her. "No, Zara, not that. I cannot take the oath. It is utterly impossible. It is much more impossible now, than it was before."
"Why?" she asked, in surprise.
"Because I love you, dear."
"Ah," she said smiling, "as if that were not a greater reason for your taking it, instead of denying it."
"No, Zara," I said again. "I cannot take the oath of nihilism. I have already taken an oath which thoroughly obviates such a possibility."
"Another oath, Dubravnik?"
"Yes."
"To whom?"
"To the czar."
"Oh," she exclaimed, and she shuddered. "I had forgotten that you were in the service of his majesty." I thought that she drew away from me at that, but the motion was so slight as to be almost imperceptible. "I had forgotten all that about you, Dubravnik." Again there was a shudder, now more visible than before. "You are under oath to the czar; to the man, who, because he permits so many wrongs to happen I have learned to hate." She straightened her body. "And Dubravnik I can hate quite as forcibly as I can love."
"I do not doubt it," I said.
"You must take the oath. You must take it. You shall repudiate that other one to the czar."
"It cannot be, Zara."
"It must be! It shall be!"
"No," I said; and there was such calm finality, such forcible emphasis in the monosyllable I used, that she drew still farther away from me, shuddering again as she did so, and I saw her face grow colder in its expression, although I did not believe that it was caused by any change in her attitude toward me.
"Can nothing move you, Dubravnik? Can nothing change you from this purpose of yours? Must you, because you have given your word to a tyrant, remain loyal to him? Must you, in spite of the great love you have for me, remain true to him who is my enemy?"
"I must; for your sake as well as for mine."
"For my sake!" she laughed, and it was not a pleasant laugh to hear, especially at that moment, and following as it did upon all the tenderness that had passed between us. "For my sake! Why Dubravnik, it is for my sake that I ask you to take the oath."
"Zara," I said, choosing my words deliberately, "last night in the glass covered garden, where the colored lights were glowing, I heard you utter words which I can never forget, and which I have thought upon many times since I heard them. You repudiated, with all the intensity of your soul, the methods which these nihilists employ to attain their ends. You called them murderers, assassins, scoundrels, cutthroats, defamers of character, and many other things which I need not name. What you did not accuse them of, in words, you charged them with, by implication; and now you ask me to become one with them; and not only that, to deny my manhood and my honor by repudiating my oath to another."
"I asked you to protect yourself and me," she said, simply, but with a coldness and a suggestion of hardness in her tone, that had been entirely absent from it until that instant.
"I will do that, Zara. I will save you, and I will save myself. I will save you from yourself. There will be a way. I have not yet determined upon what it will be, but I will find a means."
Suddenly she slipped to the floor, upon her knees before me, and with clasped hands upraised, in an attitude of supplication, she cried aloud in a very agony of intensity.
"Oh, my love, do as I ask you to do. Take the oath of nihilism."
CHAPTER XIV
THE SCORN OF A WOMAN
It seemed at that moment as if I could not deny her. Every impulse of my soul cried out to me that it would be a very little thing to do, after all.
It was not the danger which threatened, that influenced me, not at all that; it was her own supplication. The danger, and our own necessities, were very real for her, even if I, in my secret heart, made little of them.
For a moment I think I was undecided, but then the full force of what such an act would mean, the full realisation of what I would become in my own eyes by so stultifying myself, brought me back to energy, and I reached forward, grasping her, and drew her to her feet; I rising, also.
"Zara," I said with deliberation, "once and for all, and for the last time, we must not discuss such a thing. If I should take the oath of nihilism, if I should even consider doing so, I could not look into my mirror, save with horror. I am a man in the employ of his majesty, the czar. I have given him my word of honor, as an American gentleman, to do and perform certain things, and I will and must do and perform them all. I should say, too, that he did not seek me, but that I sought him. That is to say, he did not seek me with any knowledge on my part that he did so, and I sought him while I was entirely ignorant that he even guessed at my intent. Seeking him, I was brought into contact with him. I have found him to be a man who is worthy of much admiration; a man for whom I have infinite respect and esteem, notwithstanding the charges you make against him, and the things of which you deem him guilty." She made a gesture of repulsion, but I took no notice of it, and went on. "I find now, Zara, in the light of what has occurred here between us, and in the glory of our great love, that I must tell you who and what I am, and how it happens that I am here with you, at this moment." She bowed her head in acknowledgment of my statement, but made no reply in words. She had changed wonderfully in the last few minutes, and she was cold now, and distant, shocked, I thought, by this new difficulty that had come between us at the very moment of our greatest happiness. "I am Daniel Derrington, an American. I have been, for many years in the past, in the service of my government as a diplomatic agent and secret service officer; something very much after the character of what you would call over here, a spy. Yet, in my country, Zara, we have no spies, as you understand the term. My employment has been an honorable one, and no man can defame it." She shrugged her shoulders, and I went on rapidly. "In the operation of my duties, I have visited St. Petersburg several times. From a distance, and as an observer only, I have studied nihilism and the nihilist. Some time ago, a friend of mine whose name perhaps you will recognize, came to me and made a suggestion, which, having followed, has ended by my being here."
"Who was that man?" she asked.
"Alexis Saberevski."
She nodded.
"I know him," she said simply.
"In coming to St. Petersburg and seeking audience with his majesty, acting thereby under the suggestion made by my friend, I proposed to the czar the organization of a certain band of men whose duty it has been, and is, and will continue to be until it is successful, to drive organized nihilism out of Russia."
"You can never do that," said Zara, with fine contempt.
"I can do it. It shall be done."
She tore herself from my grasp and leaped to her feet, darting across the room and placing the table between us, with a motion so quick that she was beyond my reach before I could detain her. I had expected from her violent action, an outburst of words; but it did not come. Instead, she stood calmly beyond the table, leaning gently upon it with one hand, and gazed across the space that separated us, while she said, coolly, and not without contempt:
"Complete your story, Dubravnik. It interests me. I shall be glad indeed to hear it, finding as I now do, that I have permitted myself to fall in love with a professional spy."
I HAVE PERMITTED MYSELF TO FALL IN LOVE WITH A PROFESSIONAL SPY"I HAVE PERMITTED MYSELF TO FALL IN LOVE WITH A PROFESSIONAL SPY"(Page 208)
God! how her tone hurt me! How the words she uttered pierced me! How the contemptuous scorn in her voice and manner, tore to shreds the fabric of a beatific existence I had created in my imagination! A moment ago, confident of her love, her admiration, and her esteem, I saw now, when it was too late, that the very announcement of my profession had destroyed it, with a stroke as deadly as the knife of an assassin in the heart of his victim.
And I understood, also, why my statement should have had such an effect upon her. Reared as she had been, in the society of St. Petersburg; taught from her cradle to hate and despise, as well as to fear, a spy; educated in utter abhorrence of everything that pertains to that class, at the Russian capital, she could look upon me, now, only with horror and loathing. I was that thing she had most despised. I was that monstrosity of creation, which, calling itself a man, was, according to Zara's lights, without principal, honor, integrity, or manhood.
I stood before her, not with bowed head, as perhaps I might have done had my true feelings been expressed, but with bowed and stricken heart, suddenly aware that I had gained the glory of her love only to lose it, and in a manner which carried with it no redress.
"I have completed an organization of men, Zara," I went on, calmly, and in a tone which I endeavored to render as monotonous as possible, "that has for its purpose the undoing of nihilism, as it is now practiced. That body of men extends, in its ramifications, throughout St. Petersburg, and even to other cities of Russia. Its purpose, primarily, is not to send conspirators to Siberia to suffer exile there, with all the other horrors that go with it, but to——"
"Enough!" she interrupted me. "I have heard quite enough, Dubravnik! What you say to me now, is meaningless twaddle. You are like all the others who pit themselves against the silent body of men and women who are engaged in seeking the freedom of their country. If you knew anything of the horrors of Siberia, to which you so glibly refer, you would shudder when you mention them, and you would fly with horror from any act of your own that might commit a person to Siberia, and exile."
She came half-way around the table, and stood facing me, somewhat nearer. "If you had taken a journey through Siberia before you offered your services to the czar, you would have strangled yourself, or have cut out your tongue, rather than have gone to him with any such dastardly proposition as you confess yourself to have fathered.Youprate of stultifying yourself by taking the oath of nihilism, and repudiating your word to Alexander.You!You!A Professional spy!" She threw back her head and laughed aloud, not with glee, but with utter derision of spirit, and I shrank from the sound of it as I might have done from a blow in the face.
Again she was a creature of moods and impulses. Again the wild Tartar blood, leaping in her veins, controlled her. With a sudden move she came nearer to me, and bending forward, looked into my face intently, as if searching for something which had hitherto escaped her notice.
"What are you doing, Zara?" I asked her; and she replied.
"I am searching for the man whom, but a moment ago, I thought I loved. I am seeking to find what it could have been that I saw in your eyes, or your face, or your manner, that has so 'stultified'me. It is an apt word, Dubravnik."
"Seek further, and perhaps you will find."
"No," she said. "He is gone, if he ever was there;" and she shrank slowly away from me, backward, across the room, until the table was again between us, and she stood leaning upon it with both hands this time, peering at me with widened eyes that might have belonged to a child in the act of staring between the bars of a cage at some wild beast confined within it.
It is impossible to describe her attitude and the expression of her face, at that moment. Horror, repulsion, contempt, loathing, even hatred, were depicted there. I recognized the fact with shuddering despair. I was that one thing which she most despised.
It is strange how the light of the world went out, for me. In realizing the great calamity that had fallen upon me, I forgot all else; but strangely enough I did not once think of appealing to her. Slowly I turned away, and with slow strides approached the door which would admit me to the corridor, and so permit me to pass from the house to the street.
I reached it; I drew it open. I did not turn my head to look at her again, lest I should become unmanned, and degrade myself by pleading with her for the impossible. I passed into the hallway and pulled the door shut behind me, and then, somehow, I got as far as the balustrade, which, by following it, would lead me to the bottom of the stairs at the house entrance.
My foot was upon the first step of the stairs when I heard rushing footsteps behind me, and instantly was caught by clinging arms around my neck, and I felt her hot and quick breath upon my cheek.
She did not speak; she only clung to me. I did not speak; but I turned about with restored strength, and with my spirit renewed. I seized her in my arms. I crushed her against me, violently. I raised her from her feet, holding her as if she had been a child, and then, bearing her with me, I strode backward through the doorway, and into the room I had just left. I carried her to the divan, and I seated her upon the edge of it, still retaining my grasp upon her; and I said:
"Zara, you are mine. Nothing short of death shall take you from me. In the last few moments I have experienced all the horrors of a separation from you. A little while ago you loved me. Only a few moments ago, we were all there was in creation. For a moment which has seemed an eternity, I believed that I had lost you, but when you followed me to the landing of the stairway, I knew that I had not lost you, even for that instant. You love me, Zara, and you shall be mine. Before God, you shall be!"
For a moment I thought she intended to struggle again, to escape me. Indeed, I was certain that she was on the point of doing so, and I tightened my grasp upon her while I dropped upon one knee, and added:
"Zara, let me hear you say once again that you love me."
Her answer was a burst of tears, and for a time she could find no other expression for her emotions; and while these lasted, she clung to me the more tightly, so that when, at last, the storm did come to an end, her lips were closely against my ear, and I heard the whispered words:
"I do love you."
But instantly she started away from me, and she cried out.
"Wait! wait, Dubravnik! I remember, now, that I had begun to tell you a story. I was telling you what made me a nihilist."
"Yes."
"I will finish the story, if you will let me."
"Finish it," I said; "but do so while my arm is around you, and with your head resting against my shoulder. Let me hold you here, where you are, so that I may know I will not lose you again. You are a creature of such changing impulses. That half-wild nature of yours is sometimes so violent in its conclusions. Tell me the story, Zara. I will listen to it."
CHAPTER XV
THE MURDER OF A SOUL
Zara did as I requested. She seated herself upon the divan, and I sat beside her, with my arm around her. She rested her head against my shoulder, and in a low and dreamy tone she began, as if there had been no hiatus, the continuation of that story which was to thrill me as nothing else of the kind had ever done.
You must understand that she was pleading for my life, as she believed, in the relation of this bit of history which I was soon to learn had touched her so closely. She believed that my life could be saved only by means of my joining with the nihilists, in consenting to take their oath, and to become one with them. I have often, at retrospective moments, gone back again to that hour, and lived it over in thought, wondering how I could still resist her when I listened to the passion of her utterances, and to a recital of the terrible wrongs that had been visited upon those whom Zara loved, in the name of the czar.
As before, she told the story as if I had been the participant in it; as if the young woman whose history it touched most closely, had been my own sister.
In the retelling of it, I purposely render it as concise as possible, but I am utterly incapable of imparting to it the dramatic effect of her recital, heightened and added to by her warm sympathies.
"Remember," she said, "that I am representing you as the brother of this poor girl, Dubravnik. You, and your sister Yvonne, orphaned in your youth, occupied together the great palace of your father's, and were waited upon by an army of servants, many of whom had been in the employ of your family before either of you were born.
"Among your acquaintances there is another officer, one who is as great a favorite at court; and within the palace of the emperor, as you are. He is of good family, handsome, accomplished, and rich. Nevertheless, you dislike him, principally because he is in love with your sister and you know that he is, in every way, unworthy of her. She shares the aversion which you feel for this man, declining all his advances, and at last refuses to receive him. Beginning with that time, he persecutes her with his attentions, to the point where you are led to interfere; but this man has already been to the czar, and has secured his royal approval of the marriage. He laughs at you when you remonstrate. You also go to the czar, who listens attentively to all that you have to say, finally consenting that Yvonne shall not be forced into the marriage against her will. This officer, when he hears of it, is furious, and one night, at the club, he publicly insults you, so that you have no other course than to challenge him. He is a practiced duelist, and believes that he can kill you easily; thus he would leave the coast clear for his further machinations. In the affair which follows, you surprise everybody by wounding your adversary quite seriously; and during a few months that succeed the duel, you are relieved of further anxiety concerning the matter. But he recovers; he returns to his former position at the palace; and misjudging his power and influence, insults you again, almost in the presence of the emperor. For that, he is banished from the palace, and degraded in the army; and quite naturally he attributes his misfortunes to you, upon whom he vows vengeance. You hear of his threats, but laugh at them—and forget them. He does not.
"This man becomes a nihilist and a dangerous one. He plots and plans for your overthrow, and for the possession of your sister whom he continues to persecute in many ways. She does not tell you these things, fearing the consequences if you were to fight another duel. At last, however, more or less of it comes to your attention, and the consequence is that you publicly horsewhip him, for which act you are suspended from attendance at the palace for thirty days. During that interval a horrible thing occurs. It is at the time when the extremists among nihilists are rampant, and when the secret police does its deadly work unquestioned; a time five years ago. People are arrested and spirited away, from among the highest and the lowest. Victims are found in the palace as well as in the hovel. No person is sacred from these mysterious arrests; no tribunal hears a victim's defense; no official dares to interfere. Even you may at any moment become a victim of this awful method. A complaint is lodged against a wholly innocent person, no matter by whom; it may even be anonymous. In the dead of night police from the Third Section visit the house of the person complained against, a search is made, and if incriminating documents are found, that person disappears forever. Where? nobody knows save those who carry out the secret decree. I will not worry you with the useless details; in fact you have had sufficient introduction to the story already.
"Twice each week since your expulsion from the palace you are compelled to remain on duty over night, and at last the morning comes when you return to your home after one of these vigils to find yourself face to face with a horror which you knew existed, but which you had never before comprehended. Ah, it is pitiful; but listen. You find when you arrive, that all is excitement. The servants are running hither and thither; they whisper among themselves, and at first you can get no explanation from them. In vain you call for your sister. Frightened glances, sobs, and groans, are the only replies you get, and you rush to her apartment, only to find that it is empty—that she is gone. The room is in the utmost disorder. Clothing is scattered everywhere. Yvonne's most sacred treasures are strewn upon the floor. The contents of her dressing case are tumbled in confusion upon the furniture. Chairs are overturned. The cushions of the chairs and couches are ripped open. The bed is a ruin, dismembered, torn apart, and heaped in a corner. The carpet has been pulled from its fastenings, and is rolled and tumbled into a mass in the middle of the floor. The pictures are torn from the walls; vases have been overturned; even the French clock, on the mantel, has been ruined in the awful search, and the very walls of the room are dented by the hammer which has pounded them in the effort to find a secret hiding place. You know only too well what has happened, and yet you do not realize it. You are dazed. You think that you will awake and find that it is all a dream. You cannot believe that it is the sleeping room of your own sister that has been thus invaded and desecrated. At last from one of the older and more trusted servants you hear the truth, and while he speaks, you listen dumbly, wonderingly."
Zara left her place beside me on the divan, and stood facing me, near the center table, and in the intensity of her story, lowered her voice perceptibly. She bent forward a little, unconsciously throwing over me the same sort of spell that now dominated her. In my own eagerness I leaned forward, my right elbow resting upon my knee, and with bated breath, waited for her to continue. When she did resume, it was with a suppressed intensity that is indescribable.
"This is what the old servant told you: An hour after midnight there was a peremptory summons at the door, and when he opened it he discovered beyond the threshold, one of those terrible details of fiends which the Third Section sends out on its foulest errands; but he did not dream that they were after your sister; he only thought that you were in trouble. The officer in charge went straight to the door of your sister's room, as if he were as familiar with the internal arrangements of the house, as were its regular inmates. He threw the door ajar without warning, and followed by the scoundrels who accompanied him, entered the room where your sister was in bed. Sleeping innocence was aroused by a brutal command. Your sister, as pure, as sweet, as guiltless of wrong, as beautiful in spirit as the angels in heaven, was dragged from her bed by the rough hands of those human devils. Her shrieks and cries, were answered by jeers. Her piteous appeal that they would leave the room until she clothed herself, was refused with curses. She was compelled to dress in their presence, underneath the blazing glare of every light in the room, and before the eyes of those inhuman wretches whose gloating, bloodshot gaze befouled her sweet purity, as a drop of filth will befoul a limpid spring."
"If you had entered the room at that moment, and the czar had been there, would you have killed him, Dubravnik? Have you a sister? Answer! Would you have killed the czar, if he had been there?the czar was there!"
Zara raised herself to her full stature as she cried aloud this statement. Her right hand was raised high above her head; her attitude was one of righteous denouncement, and the wrath of an outraged goddess glowed like living fire, in every attribute of her being. Then she came a step nearer to me, and continued:
"He was there in the spirit of the outrage. He creates and upholds the law which permitted it. Yes, you would have killed him, and you would not have called it murder. You would have given the deed another name; you would have called it retribution. I see it in your face; it flashes in your eyes. I am not telling you a romance, in order to excite your compassion, or to create sympathy. I am relating an actual occurrence. I am telling you the story that made me a nihilist."
What a woman Zara was at that moment! She seemed the embodiment of vengeance—of righteous retribution; the personification of the cause she so splendidly advocated. I looked upon her almost with awe, at the same time realizing that I was thrilled almost into active acquiescence to her demands. She continued:
"There are not words to describe the emotions that sweep over you, as you listen to the servant's story. You become benumbed, dazed. You hear it through to the end, and there is not much more.
"You learn from him that papers of incriminating character were found among your sister's effects; that a letter was there, which told that she was engaged in a conspiracy to assassinate the czar, by poison; that she, being a welcome guest at the imperial palace, had agreed to put poison in the wine that he should drink on the following day—a deadly poison—cyanide of potassium; that the poison itself was found with the letter—a harmless looking powder, but a deadly one. You are told that Yvonne was dragged away by those men, and taken—ah, the servant could not tell you where they took her; but he could tell you how she sobbed, and moaned, protesting her innocence, repudiating all knowledge of the things they had found, crying out for you, in her agony; and how one of the men struck her a brutal blow in the face, because she would not be quiet. That is all the servant could tell you. Yvonne was gone. That one truth glared at you from every hideous corner of the desecrated room. Hours—many of them—have passed since then. You laugh wildly, insanely, as you brush the servant aside, and dash from the house in pursuit.
"'The czar is my friend! He is her friend! He will save her!' That is what you cry aloud as you run along the streets towards the palace, forgetting yourbritzska, in your haste, and agony. You forget that you have been suspended from attendance at the palace, and that the guards have been ordered not to admit you, but you are made to remember it when you arrive. They stop you. You cannot get past them. In vain you tell them of the arrest of your sister, and that you must see the emperor, but you only give them an added reason for keeping you out. They order you away. You refuse to go. They attempt to force you, and you strike one of them, knocking him down."
"Then all your pent up agony is loosed. You have the strength of a dozen men. You scatter the guards around you like flies, and rush past them, straight for the cabinet of the emperor, where you have always been a welcome guest. You tell yourself that he loves you—that he loves your sister; that as soon as he hears the truth, he will correct the awful wrong that has been done; that the men who outraged the sanctity of your sister's sleeping room, will be punished. Ah! You do not know the czar—that man whom you call your friend; who is God's and man's worst enemy!
"But you are soon to know him better. You are soon to discover what manner of man it is to whom you have given your soul and body, your allegiance and your worship, all the years of your life. You are soon to know—and oh, how bitter is the awakening.
"You dash unannounced into his presence. In a wild torrent of words, you pour forth the awful tale. You laugh, you cry; you implore, you demand; he only frowns, or smiles derisively. You rave; he calls the guard. You find that hedoesknow; that others have been there before you, and that the letter supposed to have been found in the possession of your sister, has already been read by him. With horror, you realize that he believes—that there is no hope for the sister you love so tenderly, who was placed in your arms by your dying mother; whom you swore to guard, and protect.
"That terrible man, who commits thousands of murders by proxy every year, frowns upon you, who have been almost like a son to him. He sneers at your agony. He believes all that has been told to him against your sister—he is even willing to believe that you are a party to her supposed misdeeds.
"'Forget your sister. She is dead to you, and to me,' his majesty commands you, coldly. 'I can forgive you for your present excitement. Forget her.'
"FORGET HER!! God! Forget your sister? Forget the little girl who was put into your arms when a child? Forget the glowing, gorgeous, beautiful young woman she has become? Then you loose another torrent of words. You curse your emperor. You revile the sacred person of the czar. You go mad; you even try to strike him. Ah! It is awful, your agony. The guard seizes you. The straps are torn from your shoulders. The buttons are cut from your coat. The czar himself uses his great strength to break your sword across his knee, and so far forgets his dignity that he strikes you in the face with his open hand; and then you are hustled to the palace gate, and thrust into the street, disgraced, helpless, insane." Zara paused an instant, then continued, monotonously:
"Then begins months of hopeless waiting. Every day you beg admittance to the palace. Every day you are refused. You write letters, begging that you may be told where your sister is detained, that you may go to her; that you may share her exile. They are unheeded. You know that she is in Siberia, but Siberia is a vast place—greater than all Europe. You petition men and officers who used to fawn upon you when you were in favor, for information concerning her. They will not even speak to you. They have been ordered not to do so. At last, when nearly five months have passed in this way, friendless and alone, for your property has been taken from you, you join the nihilists."
Zara crossed to the divan and seated herself beside me, clasping one of my hands in hers, and clinging to it as if she were herself in danger of being torn from my side, or of losing me. For a time she pressed my hand between hers, or stroked it gently, and when she resumed speech, it was in a softly-spoken voice.
"Then you find friends," she said, gently. "Through their agents, the nihilists ascertain where your sister has been taken. You learn that she is a prisoner on the unspeakably horrible island of Saghalien. Yes, and they tell you more, these new friends and helpers whom you have found among the nihilists. They know about the plot that sent her there. They know that the very man who pretended that he loved Yvonne, bribed one of your servants to place those awful papers among her things, that they might be found there by the police. You search for him, but he is abroad, so you seek out, and find, the servant who was bribed; and him, you strangle. After that, you disappear. The nihilists report that you are dead. St. Petersburg believes it. But you are not dead. You are on your way to Saghalien. Your new friends assist you with disguises; they aid you on your long journey; they provide you with money; and somehow—you never know how—you reach Saghalien, only to find that Yvonne is not there; that she has been transferred. Then you begin a weary search which consumes months; so many of them, that they swell into two long years. You go from prison to prison, from town to town, from hope to despair, from despair to hope, and at last—you find her!"
Zara dropped to her knees before me. I knew that the climax of her story was at hand. Her beautiful eyes, widened, and speaking dumbly of infinite sorrow, sought mine, and held them. I bent forward, and kissed her on the forehead. Then she resumed:
"You find her in a far away prison in the north. You find her half clothed, lost to all sense of modesty, the sport, the victim, the THING of the inhuman brutes who are her guards. You find her body; her beautiful soul has fled. She is not dead, but she gazes at you with a vacant stare of unrecognition. She laughs at you when you tell her that you are her brother. She does not know you. She has forgotten her own name. She taunts you with being another brute, like the men she has known there, in that foul haunt of unspeakable vices. Then you go quite mad. You clasp her in your arms, and draw her slender body against you. When you release her, she falls at your feet, dead, for you have buried your knife in her heart. Never again will she be the sport of brutal men. You have dealt out mercy to your suffering sister, and the agony you have endured gave you the necessary strength of will. You are God's agent in the deed."
I could feel that Zara was shuddering with the horror of the scene she had described; not at the deed of that brother who stabbed his sister to death to save her, but because of the awful fate of that poor girl, which the tragic act of her brother brought to an end. I drew Zara tenderly into my arms, and held her so for a long time, while she wept softly, with her head pillowed against my shoulder; and after a time she resumed, haltingly:
"When you turned away from your tragic deed of mercy, you killed the guard who tried to stop you. You made your escape; how, you do not remember; but you found your way back here—here, to St. Petersburg. Nobody recognized you. Your hair was white, your face was the face of a corpse. You had one more purpose; the death of two men, the czar and the conspirator. And so you went again to your friends, the nihilists. Hush! I am not through yet. There is more—much more, much more!"