The whole thing happened far more quickly than it can be told. I dragged Anne back from the window, slammed the shutters to,—for one of the Cossacks’ favorite tricks was to fire at any one seen at a window in the course of a street row,—and, curtly bidding Anne stay where she was for the moment, rushed downstairs and out into the street, revolver in hand.
Mishka and half a dozen of our men were before me; there were very few of us in the house just now; most of the others were with Loris and Vassilitzi, attending a big procession and meeting in Marchalkowskaia, with their usual object,—to maintain order as far as possible, and endeavor to prevent conflicts between the troops and the people. It was astonishing how much Loris had achieved in this way, even during these last terrible days of riot and bloodshed. He was ever on the alert; he seemed to know by instinct how to seize the right moment to turn the temper of the crowd or the soldiers, and avert disaster; and his splendid personality never failed in its almost magnetic effect on every one who came in contact with it. He was a born leader of men!
And, although he was always to the fore in every affair, as utterly reckless of his own safety as he was anxious to secure the safety of others, he had hithertocome unscathed through everything, though a couple of our men had been killed outright, several others badly wounded, and the rest of us had got a few hard knocks one way or other. I’d had a bullet through my left arm, the arm that was broken in the scrimmage outside Petersburg in June, a flesh wound only, luckily, though it hurt a bit when I had time to think of it,—which wasn’t often.
By the time we got into the street, the affair was over. The Cossacks, urging their ponies at the usual wild gallop, and firing wantonly up at the houses, since the people who had been in the street had rushed for cover, were almost out of sight; and on the road and sidewalk near at hand were several killed and wounded,—mostly women,—besides Madame Levinska, who had been the cause of it all, and had paid with her life.
She was a hideous sight, she who five minutes before had been so gay, so audacious, so full of vivacity. The brutes had riddled her prostrate body with bullets, slashed at it with their whips, trampled it under their horses’ hoofs; and it lay huddled, shapeless, with scarce a semblance to humanity left in it.
I head a low, heartfelt cry, and saw Anne beside me, her fair face ashen white, her eyes dilated with horror and compassion, as she stared at her friend’s corpse.
“Go back!” I said roughly. “You can do nothing for her. And we will see to the rest; go back, I say. There may be more trouble.”
“My duty is here,” she said quietly, and passed on to bend over a woman who was kneeling and screaming beside a small body,—that of a lad about eight or nine years old,—which lay very still.
It was, as I well knew, useless to argue with Anne;so I went on with my ambulance work in grim silence, keeping near her, and letting the others go to and fro, helping the wounded into shelter and carrying away the dead. Natalya had run out also and joined her mistress. Yossof was not at hand; it was he whom we expected to bring the news we were awaiting so eagerly. He had come with us to Warsaw, and though he lived in the Ghetto among his Jewish kindred, was constantly back and forth. He was invaluable as a messenger,—a spy some might call him,—although he knew no language but Yiddish and Polack, and the queer Russian lingo that was a mingling of all three. But of course he learned a great deal from his fellow Jews. Hunted, persecuted, wretched as they are, the Polish and Russian Jews always have, or can command, money, and the way they get hold of news is nothing short of marvellous,—in the Warsaw Ghetto, anyhow!
There was quite a crowd around us soon, as the people who had fled before the Cossacks came back again,—weeping, gesticulating, shouting imprecations on the Tzar, the Government, the soldiers,—as they always did when they were excited; but, as usual, doing very little to help.
All at once there was a bigger tumult near at hand, and a mob came pouring along the street, a disorderly procession of men and women and little children, flaunting banners, waving red handkerchiefs, laughing, crying, shouting, and singing, as if they were more than half delirious with joy and excitement. And what was more remarkable, there were neither police nor soldiers in sight, nor any sign of Loris or his men. Many such processions occurred in Warsaw that day, when the great news came,—news that was soon to be so horriblydiscounted and annulled; and that, for me, was rendered insignificant, even in that first hour, by the great tragedy that followed hard upon its coming,—the tragedy that will overshadow all my life. Even after the lapse of years I can scarcely bring myself to write of it, though every incident is stamped indelibly on my brain. Clear before my eyes now rises Anne’s face, as, with her arm about the poor mother—who was half fainting—she turned and looked at the joyous rabble.
“What is it?” she cried, and at the same instant Yossof hurried up, and spoke breathlessly to her.
She listened to his message with parted lips, her eyes starry with the light of ecstatic joy.
“What is it?” I asked in my turn, for I couldn’t catch what Yossof said.
“It’s true,—it’s true; oh, thank God for all His mercies! The end is in sight, Maurice; the new era is beginning—has begun. The Tzar has yielded; he has issued the manifesto, granting all demands—”
I stood staring at her, stricken dumb, not by the news she told, but by her unearthly beauty. The face that was so worn with all the toil and conflict and anxiety of these strenuous days and weeks was transfigured; and above it her red-gold hair shone like a crown of glory.
I know what was in her mind at that moment,—the thought that all had not been in vain, that the long struggle was almost ended, victory in sight; with freedom for the oppressed, cessation of bloodshed, a gradual return to law and order, the patient building up of a new civilization. Had I not heard her and Loris speak in that strain many times, the last only a fewhours back, when the reassuring rumors began to strengthen?
“They were dreamers, dreaming greatly!”
For a few seconds only did I stand gazing at her, for the mob was upon us. It jostled us apart, swept us along with it, and, as I fought my way to rejoin her—she and Natalya still supported the woman whose little son had just been killed—a quick revulsion of feeling came over me, and with it a queer premonition of imminent evil.
The mob was so horrible; made up for the most part of the scum of Warsaw, reeking with vodka, drunk with liquor and excitement.
Pah! They were not fit for the freedom they clamored for, and yet it was for them and for others like them, that she toiled and plotted in peril of her life!
Before I could win to her side, a warning cry arose ahead, followed instantly by the crackle of rifle fire, thephutof revolver shots, yells, shrieks, an infernal din. A squadron of Cossacks was charging the crowd from the front, and as it surged back, the same hellish sounds broke from the rear. More soldiers were following, the mob was between two fires,—trapped.
Gasping, bleeding, I struggled against the rush, striving to make my way back to where I could see the gleam of Anne’s golden hair, close against the wall. I guessed that, with her usual resource, she had drawn her companions aside when the turmoil began, and they had their backs to the wall of one of the houses.
The soldiers were right among the mob now, and it was breaking into groups, each eddying round one or more of the horsemen, who had as much as they could do to hold their own with whip and sabre. It was impossibleto reload the rifles, and anyhow they would not have been much use at these close quarters. I saw more than one horse overborne, his rider dragged from the saddle and hideously done to death. The rabble were like mad wolves rather than human beings.
A fresh volley from the front,—more troops were coming up there,—yells of triumph from the rear, where the soldiers had been beaten back and a way of retreat opened up. The furious eddies merged into a solid mass once more, a terror strickensauve qui peutbefore the reinforcements.
Impossible to make headway against this; and yet every instant I was being swept along, further from Anne. All I could do was to set my teeth and edge towards the sidewalk. I got to the wall at last, set my back to it, and let the rout pour by, the Cossacks in full chase now, felling every straggler they overtook, even slashing at the dead and wounded as they rode over them.
I started to run back, and the wild horsemen did not molest me. I still wore the uniform in which I had left Zostrov; it was in tatters after this frenzied half-hour, but it stood me in good stead once again, and prevented my being shot down.
There was Anne, still alive, thank God; she was kneeling beside the woman; and Natalya, also unhurt, stood by her, trying to raise her, and seemingly urging her to seek shelter.
I tried to shout, but my mouth was too dry, so I ran on, stumbling over the bodies that strewed the ground.
Some of the Cossacks had turned and were riding back; a group passed me as I neared Anne, and one ofthem swung his rifle up and fired. Natalya fell with a scream, and Anne sprang up.
“Shame, shame, you cowards, to shoot defenceless women!” she cried indignantly.
He spurred towards her, but I was first. I flung myself before her and fired at him. He reeled, swerved, and galloped on, but his companions were round us. I fired again, and yet again; something flashed above me; I felt a stunning blow on my forehead, staggered back, and fell.
The last thing I heard was a woman’s shriek.
It was the flat of the sabre that had got me on the forehead, otherwise there’d have been an end of me at once. I was not unconscious for very long, for when I sat up, wiped the blood out of my eyes, and stared about me, sick and dazed, unable for the moment to recollect what had happened, I could still hear a tumult raging in the distance.
The street itself was quiet; the soldiers, the mob were gone; all the houses were shut and silent, though scared faces were peeping from some of the upper windows. Here and there a wounded man or woman was staggering or crawling away; and close beside me a woman was sitting, like a statue of despair, with her back against the wall, and something lying prone across her knees—the little mangled body of the boy who had been killed in the first scuffle, that Marie Levinska had provoked.
I remembered all then, and looked round wildly for Anne. There was no sign either of her or of Natalya.
I scrambled up, impatiently binding my handkerchief tight round my wounded head, which was bleeding profusely now, and stood over the silent woman.
“Where are they? Where is the lady who was with you?” I demanded hoarsely. “Answer me, for God’s sake!”
“They took her away—those devils incarnate—and the other woman got up and ran after,” she answered dully. “There was an officer with them; he cried out that they would teach her not to insult the army.”
I felt my blood run cold. Since I returned to this accursed country I had seen many—and heard of more—deeds of such fiendish cruelty perpetrated on weak women, on innocent little children, that I knew what the Cossacks were capable of when their blood was up. They were, as the women said, devils incarnate at such times.
My strength came back to me, the strength of madness, and I rushed away, down that stricken street, with but one clear idea in my mind,—to die avenging Anne, for I knew no power on earth could save her.
As I ran the tumult waxed louder, coming, as I guessed, from the great square to which the street led at this end.
Half-way along, a woman, huddled in the roadway, clutched at me, with a moaning cry. I shook off her grasp, glanced at her, and saw she was Natalya. The faithful soul had not been able to follow her mistress far.
“Where have they taken her?” I cried.
She could not speak, but she glared at me, a world of anguish and horror in her dark eyes, and pointed in the direction I was going, and I hurried on. I had a “killer” in my hand, the deadly little bludgeon of lead, set on a spiral copper spring, that was the favorite weapon of the mob, though I haven’t the least notion as to when I picked it up.
Now I was on the fringe of the crowd that overflowedfrom the square, and was pushing my way forward towards the centre, a furious vortex of noise and confusion. A desperate fight was in progress, surging round something, some one.
“It is Anna Petrovna!” a woman screamed above the din. “They tore her clothes from her; they are beating her to death with theirnagaikas! Mother of Mercy! That such things should be!”
“‘À la vie et à la mort.’ Save her; avenge her,” some one shouted, I myself I think, and the cry was taken up and echoed hoarsely on all sides. So, there must be many of the League in the turmoil.
Now I was in the thick of it, a swaying, struggling mass of men and horses; many of the horses plunging riderless as the wild horsemen were dragged from their saddles, and disappeared in that stormy sea of outraged humanity. The Cossacks were getting the worst of it, for once, not a doubt of that.
“Back,” roared a mighty voice. “We have her; back I say; make way there,—let us pass!”
Mishka’s voice, and Mishka’s burly figure, mounted on a horse, pressed forward slowly, forcing a way through for another horseman who followed close in his wake.
“Make way, comrades,” shouted Mishka again, and at the cry, at the sight of the grim silent horseman in the rear, a curious lull fell on all within sight and hearing; though elsewhere the strife raged furiously as ever.
Loris sat erect in his saddle, as if on parade; bareheaded, his face set like a white mask, his brilliant blue eyes fixed, expressionless, no, that’s not the right word, but I can’t say what the expression was; neither horror nor anguish, nor despair, just a quiet steady gaze,without a trace of human emotion in it. Save that he was breathing heavily and slowly, he might have been a statue,—or a corpse. I am sure he was quite unconscious of his surroundings. The reins lay loose on his horse’s neck, and, though its sides heaved, and its coat was a plaster of sweat and foam and blood, the good beast took its own way quietly through that densely packed, suddenly silent mob, as if it, like its master, was oblivious of the mad world around them.
But it was on the burden borne by the silent horseman that every eye was fixed; a burden partly hidden by a soldier’s great coat. I knew she was dead,—we all knew it,—though the head with its bright dishevelled hair, as it lay heavily on her lover’s shoulder, seemed to have a semblance of life, as it moved slightly with the rise and fall of his breast. Her face was hidden, but from under the coat one long arm swayed limp, its whiteness hideously marred with jagged purple weals, from which the blood still oozed, trickling down and dripping from the tips of the fingers,—those beautiful ringless fingers that I knew and loved so well.
I had no further thought of fighting now; my brain and heart were numb, so I just dropped my weapon and fell in behind the horse, following close on its heels. Others did the same, the whole section of the crowd on this side the square moving after us, in what, compared with the chaos of a few minutes back, was an orderly retreat.
Well it was for some of them that they did so, for we had scarcely gained the street when the rattling boom of artillery sounded in the rear; followed by a renewed babel of shrieks and yells. The guns had been brought up and the work of summarily clearing the square hadbegun. But before the panic-stricken mob overtook us, flying helter-skelter before the new terror, Loris had urged his horse forward, or it quickened its pace of its own accord as the throng in front thinned and gave way more easily. I think I tried instinctively to keep up with it, but the crowd closed round me, the rush of fugitives from the rear overtook, overwhelmed us, and I was carried along with it.
I suppose I must have kept my footing, otherwise I should have been trampled down, as were so many others on that awful day. But where I went and what I did during the hours that followed I don’t know, and I never shall. I lost all sense of time and place; though I’ve a hazy recollection of stumbling on alone, through dark streets, sodden with the rain that was now falling in a persistent, icy drizzle. Some of the streets were silent and deserted; in others I paused idly to watch parties of sullen soldiers and police, grumbling and swearing over their gruesome task of collecting the dead bodies, and tossing them into carts; and again I stared into brilliantly lighted cafés and listened to the boisterous merriment of those within. Were they celebrating an imaginary victory, or acting on the principle, “Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow—perchance to-night—we die?”
Death brooded over the city that night; I felt His presence everywhere,—in the streets that were silent as the grave itself; in those whence the dead were being removed; most of all where men and women laughed and sang and defied Him! But I felt the dread Presence in a curious detached fashion. Death was my enemy indeed, an enemy who would not strike, who passed me by as one beneath contempt! And always, clearbefore my eyes, in my ears, above all other sights and sounds, I saw Anne’s face, heard her voice. Now she stood before me as I had first known her,—a radiant, queenly vision; a girl whose laughing eyes showed never a care in the world, or a thought beyond the passing moment. Her hands were full of flowers, red flowers, red as blood. Why, it was blood; it was staining her fingers, dripping from them! Yet the man didn’t see it; that man with the dark eager face, who was standing beside her, who took a spray of the flowers from her hand. What a fool this Cassavetti is not to know that she is “La Mort!”
Now she is changed; she wears a black gown, and the red flowers have vanished; but she is lovelier, more queenly than ever, as she looks at me with wide, pathetic eyes, and says, “I have deceived you!”
Again she stands, with hands outstretched, and cries, “The end is in sight; thank God for all His mercies;” and her face is as that of an angel in Heaven.
But always there is a barrier between her and me; a barrier impalpable yet unpassable. I try to surmount it, but I am beaten back every time. Now it is Cassavetti who confronts me; again, and yet again, it is Loris, with his stern white face, his inscrutable blue eyes. He is on horseback; he rides straight at me, and he bears something in his arms.
I struggled up and looked around me. I knew the place well enough, the long narrow room that had once been thesalle à mangerin the Vassilitzi’s Warsaw house, but that, ever since I had known it, had been the principal ward in the amateur hospital instituted by Anne. A squalid ward enough, for the beds were made up onthe floor, anyhow, and every bit of space was filled, leaving just a narrow track for the attendants to pass up and down.
Along that track came a big figure that I recognized at once as Mishka, walking with clumsy caution.
“You are better? That is well,” he said in a gruff undertone.
“How did I get here?” I demanded.
“Yossof brought you; he found you walking about the streets, raving mad. It is a marvel that you were not shot down.”
Then I remembered something at least of what had passed.
“How long since?” I stammered, putting my hand up to my bandaged head.
“Two days.”
“And—?”
“I will answer no questions,” he growled in his surliest fashion. “I will send you food and you are to sleep again. He will see you later.”
“He—Loris; he is safe, then?”
He nodded, but would say no more, and presently I drifted back into sleep or unconsciousness.
I’ve heard it said that sick or wounded people always die if they have no wish to live, but that’s not true. I wanted to die as badly as any one ever did, but yet I lived. I suppose I must have a lot of recuperative energy; anyhow, next time I woke up I felt pretty much as usual, except for the dull throb of the wound across my forehead, which some one had scientifically strapped up. My physical pain counted as nothing compared with the agony of shame and grief I suffered in my soul, as, bit by bit, I recollected all that had happened. I had failed in my trust, failed utterly. I was left to guard her; I ought to have forbidden—prevented—her going out into the street at all; and, when the worst came, I ought to have died with her.
I tried to say something of this to Loris when I was face to face with him once more, in the room where Anne and I had been working when that ill-omened woman, Marie Levinska, interrupted us; but he stopped me with an imperative gesture.
“Do not reproach yourself, my friend. All that one man could do, you did. I know that well, and I thank you. One last service you shall do, if you are fit for it. You shall ride with us to-night when we take her away. Mishka has told you of the arrangements?That is well. If we get through, you will not return here; that is why I have sent for you now.”
“Not return?” I repeated.
“No,” he answered quietly but decisively. “Once before I begged you to leave us, now I command you to do so; not because I do not value you, but because—she—would have wished it. Wait, hear me out! You have done noble service in a cause that can mean nothing to you, except—”
“Except that it is a cause that the lady I served lived,—and died—for, sir,” I interrupted.
More than once before I had spoken of her to him as the woman we both loved; but now the other words seemed fittest; for not half an hour back I had learned the truth, that, I think, I had known all along,—that she who lay in her coffin in the great drawing-room yonder was, if her rights had been acknowledged, the Grand Duchess Loris of Russia. It was Vassilitzi who told me.
“They were married months ago, in Paris,—before she went to England,” he had said, and for a moment a bitter wave of memory swept over me, though I fought against it. Hadn’t I decided long since that the queen could do no wrong, and therefore the deception she had practised counted for nothing? All that really mattered was that I loved her in spite of all; asked nothing more than to be allowed to serve her.
“You served her under a delusion,” he rejoined with stern sadness. “And now it is no longer possible for you to serve her even so. I cannot discuss the matter with you; I cannot explain it,—I would not if I could. Only this I repeat. I request—command you, tomake your way out of this country as soon as possible, and rejoin your friends in England, or America,—where you will. It may mean more to you than you dare hope or imagine. You will have some difficulty probably, though some of the trains are running again now. I think your safest plan will be to ride to Kutno—or if necessary even to Alexandrovo. Here is a passport, permitting you to leave Russia; it is made out in the name you assumed when you returned as ‘William Pennington Gould,’ and is quite in order. And I must ask you, for the sake of our friendship, to accept these”—he took a roll of notes out of the drawer of the writing-table—“and, as a memento,—this. It is the only decoration I am able to confer on a most chivalrous gentleman.”
He held out a little case, open, and I took it with an unsteady hand. It contained a miniature of Anne, set in a rim of diamonds. I looked at it,—and at him,—but I could not speak; my heart was too full.
“There is no need of words, my friend; we understand each other well, you and I,” he continued, rising and placing his hands on my shoulders. “You will do as I wish,—as I entreat—insist—?”
“I would rather remain with you!” I urged. “And fight on, for the cause—”
He shook his head.
“It is a lost cause; or at least it will never be won by us. The manifesto, the charter of peace! What is it? A dead letter. Nicholas issued it indeed, but his Ministers ignore it, and therefore he is helpless, his charter futile and the reign of terror continues,—will continue. Therefore I bid you go, and you must obey. So this is our parting, for though we shall meet, weshall be alone together no more. Therefore, God be with you, my friend!”
When next I saw him he stood with drawn sword, stern and stately, foremost among the guard of honor round the catafalque in the great drawing-room, where all that remained of the woman we both loved lay in state, ere it fared forth on its last journey.
The old house was full of subdued sounds, for as soon as darkness fell, by ones and twos, men and women were silently admitted and passed as silently up the staircase to pay their last homage to their martyr.
Nearly all of them had flowers in their hands,—red flowers,—sometimes only a single spray, but always those fatal geranium blossoms that were the symbol of the League. They laid them on the white pall, or scattered them on the folds that swept the ground, till the coffin seemed raised above a sea of blood.
Every detail of that scene is photographed on my memory. The great room, hung with black draperies and brilliantly lighted by a multitude of tall wax candles; the air heavy with incense and the musky odor of the flowers; the two priests in gorgeous vestments who knelt on either side, near the head of the coffin, softly intoning the prayers for the dead; the black-robed nuns who knelt at the foot, silent save for the click of their rosaries; and the ghostly procession of men and women, many of them wounded, all haggard and wan, that passed by, and paused to gaze on the face that lay framed, as it were, beneath a panel of glass in the coffin-lid, from which the pall was drawn back. Many of them, men as well as women, were weeping passionately; some pressed their lips to the glass; others raised their clenched hands as if toregister a vow of vengeance; a few,—a very few,—knelt in prayer for a brief moment ere they passed on.
I stood at my post, as one of the guard, and watched it all in a queer, impersonal sort of way, as if my soul was somehow outside my body.
Although I stood some distance away, the quiet face under the glass seemed ever before my eyes; for I had looked on it before this solemn ceremonial began. How fair it was,—and yet how strange; though it was unmarred, unless there was a wound hidden under the strip of white ribbon bound across the forehead and almost concealed by the softly waving chestnut hair. But even the peace of death had not been able to banish the expression of anguish imprinted on the lovely features. Above the closed eyelids, with their long, dark lashes, the brows were contracted in a frown, and the mouth was altered, the white teeth exposed, set firmly in the lower lip. Still she was beautiful, but with the beauty of a Medusa. I could not think of that face as the one I had known and loved; it filled me with pity and horror and indignation, indeed; but—it was the face of a stranger.
Why had I not been content to remember her as I had known her in life! She seemed so immeasurably removed from me now; and that not merely because I could no longer think of her as Anne Pendennis,—only as “The Grand Duchess Anna Catharine Petrovna, daughter of the Countess Anna Vassilitzi-Pendennis, and wife of Loris Nicolai Alexis, Grand Duke of Russia,” as the French inscription on the coffin-plate ran,—but also because the mystery that had surrounded her in life seemed more impenetrable than ever now that she was dead.
Where was her father, to whom she had seemed so devotedly attached when I first knew her? Even supposing he was dead, why was he ignored in that inscription, save for the mere mention of his surname, the only indication of her mixed parentage. She had never spoken of him since that day at the hunting-lodge when she had said I must ask nothing concerning him. I had obeyed her in that, as in all else, and had even refrained from questioning Vassilitzi or any other who might have been able to tell me anything about Anthony Pendennis. Besides, there had been no time for queries or conjectures during all the feverish excitement of these days in Warsaw. But now, in this brief and solemn interlude, all the old problems recurred to my mind, as I stood on guard in the death-chamber; and I knew that I could never hope to solve them.
The ceremony was over at last. As in a dream I followed the others, and, at a low-spoken word of command, filed past the catafalque, with a last military salute, though I was no longer in uniform, for Mishka had brought me a suit of civilian clothes.
In the same dazed way I found myself later riding near the head of the procession that passed through the dark silent streets, and out into the open country. I didn’t even feel any curiosity or astonishment that a strong escort of regular cavalry—lancers—accompanied us, or when I recognized the officer in command as young Mirakoff, whom I had last seen on the morning when I was on my way to prison in Petersburg. He didn’t see me,—probably he wouldn’t have known me if he had,—and to this day I don’t know how he and his men came to be there, or how the whole thingwas arranged. Anyhow, none molested us; and slowly, through the sleeping city, and along the open road, the cortège passed, ghostlike, in the dead of night. The air was piercingly cold, but the sky was clear, like a canopy of velvet spangled with great stars.
Mishka rode beside me, and at last, when we seemed to have been riding for an eternity, he laid his hand on my rein, and whispered hoarsely, “Now.”
Almost without a sound we left the ranks, turned up a cross-road, and, wheeling our horses at a few paces distant, waited for the others to go by; more unreal, more dreamlike than ever. Save for the steady tramp of the horses’ feet, the subdued jingle of the harness and accoutrements, they might have been a company of phantoms. I saw the gleam of the white pall above the black bulk of the open hearse,—watched it disappear in the darkness, and knew that the Grand Duchess had passed out of my life forever.
Still I sat, bareheaded, until the last faint sounds had died away, and the silence about us was only broken by the night whisper of the bare boughs above us.
“Come; for we have yet far to go,” Mishka said aloud, and started down the cross-road at a quick trot.
How far we rode I can’t say; but it was still dark when we halted at a small isolated farmhouse, where Mishka roused the farmer, who came out grumbling at being disturbed before daybreak. After a muttered colloquy, he led us in and called his wife to prepare tea and food for us, while he took charge of the horses.
“You must eat and sleep,” Mishka announced in his gruff way. “You ought to be still in the hospital; but we are fools, in these days, every one of us! Ho—little father—shake down some hay in the barn; we will sleep there.”
I must have been utterly exhausted, for I slept heavily, dreamlessly, for many hours, and only woke under Mishka’s hand, as he shook me. Through the doorway of the barn, the level rays of the westering sun showed that the short November day was drawing to a close.
“You have slept long; that is well. But now we must be up and away if we are to reach Kutno to-night.”
“You go with me?”
“So far, yes. If there are no trains running yet, we go on to Alexandrovo. I shall not leave you till I have set you safely on your way. Those are my orders.”
“I don’t know why I’m going,” I muttered dejectedly,sitting up among the hay. “I would rather have stayed.”
“You go because he ordered you to; and we all obey him, whether we like it or not!” he retorted. “And he was right to send you. Why should you throw your life away for nothing? Come, there is no time to waste in words. I have brought you water; wash and dress. Remember you are no longer a disreputable revolutionist, but a respectable American citizen, and we must make you look a little more like one.”
There was something queer in his manner. Gruff as ever, he yet spoke to me, treated me, almost as if I were a child who had to be heartened up, as well as taken care of. But I didn’t resent it. I knew it was his way of showing affection; and it touched me keenly. We had learned to understand each other well, and no man ever had a stancher comrade than I had in Mishka Pavloff.
During that last of our many rides together he was far less taciturn then usual; I had never heard him say so much at one stretch as he did while we pressed on through the dusk.
“We have shown you something of the real Russia since you came back—how many weeks since? And now, if you get safe across the frontier, you will be wise to remain there, as any wise man—or woman either—who values life.”
“I don’t value my life,” I interrupted bitterly.
“You think you do not. That is because you are hasty and ignorant, though the ignorance is not your fault. You think your heart is broken,hein? Well, one of these days, not long hence, perhaps, you will think differently; and find that life is a good thing afterall,—when it has not to be lived in Russia! If we ever meet again, you will know I have spoken the truth.”
I knew that before many days had passed, and wondered then how much he could have told me if he had been minded.
“If we meet again!” I echoed sadly. “Is that likely, friend Mishka?”
“God knows! Stranger things have happened. If I die with, or before my master,—well, I die. If I do not, I, too, shall make for the frontier when he no longer has need of me. Where is the good of staying? What should I do here? I would like to see peace—yes, but there will be no peace within this generation—”
“But your father?” I asked, thinking of the stanch old man, who had gone back to his duty at Zostrov.
“My father is dead.”
“Dead!” I exclaimed, startled for the moment out of the inertness that paralyzed my brain.
“He was murdered a week after he returned to Zostrov. There was trouble with themoujiks,—as I knew there would be. The garrison at the castle was helpless, and there was trouble there also, first about my little bomb that covered our retreat. You knew I planned that,—hein?”
“No, but I suspected it.”
“And you said nothing; you are discreet enough in your way.Henever suspected,—does not even now; he thinks it was a plot hatched by his enemies—perhaps by Stravensky himself, the old fox! But we should never have got through to Warsaw, if, for a time, at least, all had not believed that he and I and you were finished off in that affair. Better for him perhaps, if it had been so!”
He fell silent, and I know he was thinking of the last tragedy, as I was. The memory of it was hard enough for me to bear; what must it not be for Loris?
“Yes, there was much trouble,” Mishka resumed. “Old Stravensky was summoned to Petersburg, and he had scarcely set out before the revolution began, and the troops were recalled. There was but a small garrison left; I doubt if they would have moved a finger in any case; and so themoujikstook their own way, and my father—went to his reward. He was a good man, and their best friend for many a year, but that they did not understand, since the Almighty has made them beasts without understanding!”
The darkness had fallen, but I guessed he shrugged his shoulders in the way I knew so well. A fatalist to the finger-tips was Mishka.
“The news came three days since,” he continued. “And such news will come, in time, from every country district. I tell you all you have seen and known is but the beginning, and God knows what the end will be! Therefore, as I have said, this is no country for honest peaceable folk. My mother died long since, God be thanked; and now but one tie holds me here.”
“Look, yonder are the lights of Kutno.”
The town was comparatively quiet, though it was thronged with soldiers, and there were plenty of signs that Kutno had passed through its own days of terror, and was probably in for more in the near future.
We left our horses at akabakand walked through the squalid streets to the equally squalid railway depot where we parted, almost in silence.
“God be with you,” Mishka growled huskily. His face looked more grim than ever under the poor lightof a street-lamp near, and he held my hands in a grip whose marks I bore for a week after.
He strode heavily away, never once looking back, and I turned into the depot, where I found the entrance, the ticket office, and the platform guarded by surly, unkempt soldiers with fixed bayonets. I lost count of the times I had to produce my passport; and turned a deaf ear to the insults lavished upon me by most of my interlocutors. I thought I had better resume my pretended ignorance of Russian and trust to German to carry me through, as it did. I was allowed to board one of the cars at last; they were filthy, lighted only by a candle here and there, and crowded with refugees of all classes. I was lucky to get in at all, and, though all the cars were soon crammed to their utmost capacity, it was an hour or more before the train started. Then it crawled and jolted through the darkness at a pace that I reckoned would land us at Alexandrovo somewhere about noon next day,—if we ever got there at all.
But the indescribable discomforts of that long night journey at least prevented anything in the way of coherent thought. I look back on it now as a blank interval; a curtain dropped at the end of a long and lurid act in the drama of life.
At Alexandrovo more soldiers, more hustling, more interrogations; then the barrier, and beyond,—freedom!
I’ve a hazy notion that I arrived at a big, well-lighted station, and was taken possession of by some one who hustled me into a cab; but the next thing I remember clearly was waking and finding myself in bed,—a nice clean bed, with a huge down pillow affair on top,—in a big well-furnished room. That downaffair—I couldn’t remember the name of it for the moment—and the whole aspect of the room showed that I was in a German hotel; though how I got there I really couldn’t remember. I rang the bell; my hand felt so heavy that I could scarcely lift it as far, and it looked curiously thin, with blue marks, like faint bruises on it, and the veins stood out.
A plump, comfortable looking woman, in a nurse’s uniform, bustled in; and beamed at me quite affectionately.
“Now, this is better! Yes, I said it would be so!” she exclaimed in German. “You feel quite yourself again, but weak,—yes, that is only to be expected—”
“Will you be so good as to tell me where I am?” I asked, as politely as I knew how; staring at her, and wondering if I’d ever seen her before.
“Oh, you men! No sooner do you find your tongue and your senses than you begin to ask questions! And yet you say it is women who are the talkers!” she answered, with a kind of ponderous archness. “You are at the Hotel Reichshof to be sure; and being well taken care of. The head?” she touched my forehead with her firm, cool fingers. “It hurts no more? Ah, it has healed beautifully; I did well to remove the strappings yesterday. There will be a scar, yes, but that cannot be helped. And now you are hungry? Ah, we will soon set that right! It is as I said, though even the doctor would not believe me. The wounds are nothing,—so to speak; the exhaustion was the mischief. You came through from Russia? What times they are having there! You were fortunate to get through at all. Yes, you are a very fortunate man, and an excellent patient; therefore you shall have some breakfast!”
She worried me, with her persistent cheerfulness, but it would have been ungracious to tell her so. She was right in one way, though. I was ravenously hungry; and when she returned, bringing a tray with delicious coffee and rolls, I started on them, and let her babble away, as she did,—nineteen to the dozen.
I gathered that nearly a week had passed since I got to Berlin. The hotel tout had captured me at the depot, and I collapsed as I got out of the cab.
“In the ordinary way, you would have been sent to a hospital, but when they saw the portrait—”
“What portrait?” I asked; but even as I spoke my memory was returning, and I knew she must mean the miniature Loris had given me.
“What portrait? Why, the Fraulein Pendennis, to be sure!”
Istarted up at that.
“Fraulein Pendennis!” I gasped. “You know her?”
“I should do so, after nursing her through such an illness,—and so short a time since!”
“But,—when did you nurse her,—where?”
“Why, here; not in this room, but in the hotel. It is three—no, nearer four months since; she also was taken ill on her way from Russia. There is a strange coincidence! But hers was a much more severe illness. We did not think she could possibly recover; and for weeks we feared for her brain. She had suffered some great shock; though the Herr, her father, would not say what it was—”
She looked at me interrogatively; but I had no mind to satisfy her curiosity, though I guessed at once what the “shock” must have been, and that Anne had broken down after the strain of that night in the forest near Petersburg and all that had gone before it. She had never referred to this illness; that was so like her. Anything that concerned herself, personally, she always regarded as insignificant, but I thought now that it had a good deal to do with her worn appearance.
“And Herr Pendennis, where is he?” I demanded next.
“I do not know; they left together, when the Fraulein was at last able to travel. Ah, but they are devoted to each other, those two! It is beautiful to see such affection in these days when young people so often seem to despise their parents.”
It was strange, very strange. The more I tried to puzzle things out, the more hopeless the tangle appeared. Why had Pendennis allowed her to return alone to Russia, especially after she had come through such a severe illness? Of course he might be attached to some other branch of the League, but it seemed unlikely that he would allow himself to be separated from her, when he must have known that she would be surrounded by greater perils than ever. I decided that I could say nothing to this garrulous woman—kindly though she was—or to any other stranger. I dreaded the time when I would have to tell Mary something at least of the truth; though even to her I would never reveal the whole of it.
The manager came to my room presently, bringing my money and papers, and the miniature, which he had taken charge of; lucky it was for me that I had fallen into honest hands when I reached Berlin!
He addressed me as “Herr Gould” of course, and was full of curiosity to know how I got through, and if things were as bad in Warsaw as the newspapers reported. Berlin was full of Russian refugees; but he had not met one from Warsaw.
“They say the Governor will issue no passports permitting Poles to leave the city,” he said. “But you are an American, which makes all the difference.”
“I guess so,” I responded, wondering how Loris had managed to obtain that passport, and if it would haveserved to get me through if I had started from the city instead of making that longdétourto Kutno.
I assured my host that the state of affairs in the city of terror I had left was indescribable, and I’d rather not discuss it. He seemed quite disappointed, and with a queer flash of memory I recalled how the little chattering woman—I forget her name—had been just as disappointed when I didn’t give details about Cassavetti’s murder on that Sunday evening in Mary’s garden. There are a lot of people in this world who have an insatiable appetite for horrors,—when they can get them at second-hand.
“They say it’s like the days of the terror in the ‘sixties’ over again,—tortures and shootings and knoutings; and that the Cossacks stripped a woman and knouted her to death one day last week; did you hear of that?”
“I tell you I don’t mean to speak of anything that I’ve seen or heard!” I said, feeling that I wanted to kick him. He apologized profusely, and then made me wince again by referring to the miniature, with more apologies for looking at it, when he thought it necessary to take possession of it.
“But we know the so-amiable Fraulein and Herr Pendennis so well; they have often stayed here,” he explained. “And it is such a marvellous likeness; painted quite recently too, since the illness from which the Fraulein has so happily recovered!”
I muttered something vague, and managed to get rid of him on the plea that I felt too bad to talk any more, which drew fresh apologies; but when he had gone I examined the miniature more closely than I’d had an opportunity of doing since Loris gave it me.
It was not recently painted, I was quite sure of that, and yet it certainly did show her as I had known her during these last few weeks, before death printed that terrible change on her face,—and not as she was in London. But that must be my imagination; the artist had caught her expression at a moment when she was grave and sad; no, not exactly sad, for the lips and eyes were smiling,—a faint, wistful, inscrutable smile like the smile of the Sphinx, as it gazes across the desert—across the world, into space, and eternity.
As I gazed on the brave sweet face, the sordid misery that had enveloped my soul ever since that awful moment when I saw her dead body borne past, in the square, was lifted; and I knew that the last poignant agony was the end of a long path of thorns that she had trodden unflinchingly, with royal courage and endurance for weary months and years; that she was at peace, purified by her love, by her suffering, from all taint of earth.
“Dumb lies the world; the wild-yelling world with all its madness is behind thee!”
I started for England next evening, and travelled right through. I sent one wire to Jim from Berlin and another from Flushing,—where I found a reply from him waiting me. “All well, meeting you.”
That “all well” reassured me, for now that I had leisure to think, my conscience told me how badly I’d treated him and Mary. It’s true that before I started from London with Mishka I wrote saying that I was off on secret service and they must not expect to hear from me for a time, but I should be all right. That was to smooth Mary down, for I knew what she was,—dearlittle soul,—and I didn’t want her to be fretting about me. If she once got any notion of my real destination, she’d have fretted herself into a fever. But if she hadn’t guessed at the truth, I might be able to evade telling her anything at all; perhaps I might pitch a yarn about having been to Tibet, or Korea, for she would certainly want to know something of the reason for my changed appearance. I scarcely recognized myself when I looked at my reflection in the bedroom mirror at Berlin. A haggard, unkempt ruffian, gray-haired, and with hollow eyes staring out of a white face, disfigured by a half-healed cut across the forehead. I certainly was a miserable looking object, even when I’d had my hair cut and my beard shaved, since I no longer needed it as a disguise. Mary had always disliked that beard, but I doubted if she’d know me, even without it.
I landed at Queensboro’ on a typical English November afternoon; raw and dark, with a drizzle falling that threatened every moment to thicken into a regular fog. There were very few passengers, and I thought at first I was going to have the compartment to myself; but, at the last moment, a man got in whom I recognized at once as Lord Southbourne. I hadn’t seen him on the boat; doubtless he’d secured a private stateroom. He just glanced at me casually,—I had my fur cap well pulled down,—settled himself in his corner, and started reading a London paper,—one of his own among them. He’d brought a sheaf of them in with him; though I’d contented myself withThe Courier. It was pleasant to see the familiar rag once more. I hadn’t set eyes on a copy since I left England.
I didn’t speak to Southbourne, though; I don’tquite know why, except that I felt like a kind of Rip van Winkle, though I’d only been away a little more than a couple of months. And somehow I dreaded that lazy but penetrating stare of his, and the questions he would certainly fire off at me. So I lay low and said nothing; keeping the paper well before my face, till we stopped at Herne Hill for tickets to be taken. As the train started again, he threw down his paper, and moved opposite me, and held out his hand.
“Hello, Wynn!” he drawled. “Is it you or your ghost? Didn’t you know me? Or do you mean to cut me? Why, man alive, what’s wrong?” he added, with a quick change of tone. I’d only heard him speak like that once before,—in the magistrate’s room at the police court, after the murder charge was dismissed.
“Nothing; except that we’ve had a beastly crossing,” I answered, with a poor attempt at jauntiness.
“Where have you come from,—Russia?” he demanded.
I nodded.
“H’m! So you went back, after all. I thought as much! Who’s had your copy?”
“I’ve sent none; I went on private business,” I protested hotly. It angered me that he should think me capable of going back on him.
“I oughtn’t to have said that; I apologize,” he said stiffly, still staring at me intently. “But—what on earth have you been up to? More prison experiences? Well, keep your own counsel, of course. I’ve kept it for you,—as far as I knew it. Mrs. Cayley believes I’ve sent you off to the ends of the earth; and I’ve been mendaciously assuring her that you’re all right,—though Miss Pendennis has had her doubts, and nearly bowled me out, once or twice.”
“Miss—who?” I shouted.
“Miss Pendennis, of course. Didn’t you know she was staying with your cousin again? A queer coincidence about that portrait! Hello, here we are at Victoria. And there’s Cayley!”
“
It’s incredible!” I exclaimed.
“Well, it’s true, anyhow!” Jim asserted. “And I don’t see myself where the incredibility comes in.”
“You say that Mr. Pendennis wrote from Berlin not a week after I left England, and that he and Anne—Anne—are at this moment staying with you in Chelsea? When I’ve been constantly with her,—saw her murdered in the streets of Warsaw!”
“That must have been the other woman,—the woman of the portrait, whoever she may be. No one seems to know, not even Pendennis. We’ve discussed it several times,—not before Anne. We don’t think it wise to remind her of that Russian episode; it upsets her too much; for she’s not at all the thing even yet, poor girl.”
He seemed quite to have changed his mental attitude towards Anne, and spoke of her as kindly as if she had been Mary’s sister.
“It’s another case of mistaken identity based on an extraordinary likeness,” he continued. “There have been many such,—more in fact than in fiction. Look at the Bancrofts and their ‘doubles,’ for instance, a pair of them, husband and wife, who passed themselves off as Sir Squire and Lady Bancroftinnumerable times a few years back, and were never discovered. And yet, though it mightn’t be difficult for a clever impersonator to make up like Bancroft, it seems incredible that he could find a woman who could pose successfully as the incomparable Marie Wilton. You should have seen her in her prime, my boy—the most fascinating little creature imaginable, and the plainest, if you only looked at her features! It must have been a jolly sight harder to represent her, than if she’d been a merely beautiful woman, like Anne. She’s an uncommon type here in England, but not on the Continent. I don’t suppose it would be difficult to find half a dozen who would answer to the same description,—if one only knew where to look for ’em.”
“It wasn’t the resemblance of a type,—eyes and hair and that sort of thing,”—I said slowly; “the voice, the manner, the soul; why—she—knew me, recognized me even with my beard—spoke of Mary—”
“She must have been an astonishingly clever woman, poor soul! And one who knew a lot more about Anne than Anne and her father know of her. Well, you’d soon be able to exchange notes with Pendennis himself, and perhaps you’ll hit on a solution of the mystery between you. What’s that?”
I had pulled out the miniature and now handed it to him. He examined it intently under the bright light of the little acetylene lamp inside the brougham.
“This is another portrait of her? You’re right,—there’s a marvellous likeness. I’d have sworn it was Anne, though the hair is different now. It was cut short in her illness,—Anne’s illness, I mean, ofcourse,—and now it’s a regular touzle of curls. Here, put it up. I wouldn’t say anything about it to Anne, if I were you,—not at present.”
The carriage stopped, and as I stumbled out and along the flagged way, the front door was flung open, and in a blaze of light I saw Mary, and, a little behind her,—Anne herself.
I’m afraid I was very rude to Mary in that first confused moment of meetings and greetings. I think I gave her a perfunctory kiss in passing, but it was Anne on whom my eyes were fixed,—Anne who—wonder of wonders—was in my arms the next moment. What did it matter to us that there were others standing around? She was alive, and she loved me as I loved her; I read that in her eyes as they met mine; and nothing else in the world was of any consequence.
“You went back to Russia in search of me! I was quite sure of it in my mind, though Mary declared you were off on another special correspondent affair for Lord Southbourne, and he said the same; he’s rather a nice man, isn’t he, and Lady Southbourne’s a dear! But I knew somehow he wasn’t speaking the truth. And you’ve been in the wars, you poor boy! Why, your hair is as gray as father’s; and howdidyou get that wound on your forehead?”
“I’ve had some lively times one way and another, dear; but never mind about that now,” I said. We were sitting together by the fire in the drawing-room, after dinner, alone,—for Mary had effaced herself like the considerate little woman she is; probably she had joined Jim and Pendennis in the smoking-room, that was also Jim’s sanctum.
“Tell me about yourself. How did you get to Petersburg? It was you?”
“Yes; but I can’t remember even now how I got there,” she answered, frowning at the fire, and biting her underlip. A queer thrill ran through me as I watched her; she was so like that other.
“I got into the train at Calais, and I suppose I fell asleep; I was very tired after the dinner at the Cecil and Mrs. Sutherland’s party. There were two other people in the same carriage,—a man and a woman. That’s the last thing I can recollect clearly until I found myself again in a railway carriage. I’ve a confused notion of being on board ship in between; but it was all like a dream, until I suddenly saw you, and called out to you; I was in an open carriage then, driving through a strange city that I know now was Petersburg. I was taken to a house where several horrid men—quite superior sort of men in a way, but they seemed as if they hated me, and I couldn’t think why—asked me a lot of questions. At first they spoke in a language I didn’t understand at all, but afterwards in French; and then I found they wanted to know about that Mr. Cassavetti; they called him by another name, too—”
“Selinski,” I said.
“Yes, that was it; though I haven’t been able to remember it. They wouldn’t believe me when I said I’d only met him quite casually at dinner, the night before I was kidnapped,—for I really was kidnapped, Maurice—and that I knew nothing whatever about him. They kept me in a dark cell for hours, till I was half-crazy with anger and terror;and then they brought me out, and I saw you, and father; and the next thing I knew I was in bed in an hotel we’ve often stayed at, in Berlin. Father tries to persuade me that I imagined the whole thing; but I didn’t; now did I, Maurice? And what does it all mean?”
“It was all a mistake. You were taken for some one else; some one whom you resemble very closely.”
“That’s just what I thought; though father won’t believe it; or he pretends he won’t; but I am sure he knows something that he will not tell me. But there’s another thing,—that dreadful man Cassavetti. Perhaps I oughtn’t to call him that, as he’s dead; I only heard about the murder a little while ago, and then almost by accident. Maud Vereker told me; do you know her?”
“That frivolous little chatterbox; yes, I’ve met her, though I’d forgotten her name.”
“She told me all about it one day. Mary and Jim had never said a word; they seemed to be in a conspiracy of silence! But when I heard it I was terribly upset. Think of any one suspecting you of murdering him, Maurice,—just because he lived on the floor above you, and you happened to find him. You poor boy, what dreadful troubles you have been through!”
There was an interlude here; we had a good many such interludes, but even when my arm was round her, when my lips pressed hers, I could scarcely realize that I was awake and sane.
“It was just as well they did suspect me, darling,” I said after a while, “or I most certainly shouldn’t have been here now.”
She nestled closer to me, with a little sob.
“Oh, Maurice, Maurice! I can’t believe that you’re safe here again, after all! And I feel that I was to blame for it all—”
“You? Why, how’s that, sweetheart?”
“Because I flirted with that Cassavetti—at the dinner, don’t you remember? That seemed to be the beginning of everything! I was so cross with you, and he—he puzzled and interested me, though I felt frightened just at the last when I gave him that flower. Maurice, did he take me for the other girl? And was there any meaning attached to the flower?”
“Yes, the flower was a symbol; it meant a great deal,—among other things the fact that you gave it to him made him quite sure you were—the person he mistook you for. You are marvellously like her—”
“Then you—you have met her also? Who is she? Where is she?”
“She is dead; and I don’t know for certain who she was; until Jim met me to-night I believed that she was—you!”
“Were we so like as that?” she breathed. “Why, she might have been my sister, but I never had one; my mother died when I was born, you know! Tell me about her, Maurice.”
“I can’t, dear; except that she was as brave as she was beautiful; and her life was one long tragedy. But I’ll show you her portrait.”
She gave a little cry of astonishment as I handed her the miniature; the diamond setting flashed under the softly shaded electric light.
“Oh, how lovely! But—why, she’s far morebeautiful than I am, or ever shall be! Did she give you this, Maurice?”
There was a queer note in her voice as she put the question; it sounded almost like a touch of jealousy.
“No; her husband gave it to me,—after she died,” I said sadly.
“Her husband! She was married, then. Who was he?”
“A man worthy of her; but I’d rather not talk about them,—not just at present; it’s too painful.”
“Oh, Maurice, I’m so sorry,” she murmured in swift penitence; and to my great relief she questioned me no more for that evening.
But I told the whole story, so far as I knew it, to Pendennis and Jim, after the rest of the household had gone to bed; and we sat till the small hours, comparing notes and discussing the whole matter, which still presented many perplexing points.
I omitted nothing; I said how I had seen Anne—as I believed then and until this day—in that boat on the Thames; how I had suspected,—felt certain,—that she had been to Cassavetti’s rooms that night, and was cognizant of his murder; what I had learned from Mr. Treherne, down in Cornwall, and everything of importance that had happened since.
Jim punctuated the story with exclamations and comments, but Anthony Pendennis listened almost in silence, though when I came to the part about the mad woman from Siberia, who had died at the hunting-lodge, and who was spoken of as the Countess Vassilitzi, he started, and made a queer sound, like a groan, though he signed to me to continue. I wasglad afterwards that I hadn’t described what she looked like. He was a grave, stern man, wonderfully self-possessed.
“It is a strange story,” he said, when I had finished. “A mysterious one.”
“Do you hold the key to the mystery?” I asked him pointblank.
“No, though I can shed a little light on it; a very little, and I fear even that will only make the rest more obscure. But it is only right that I should give you confidence for confidence, Mr. Wynn; since you have suffered so much through your love for my daughter,—and through the machinations of this unhappy woman who certainly impersonated her,—for her own purposes.”
I winced at that. Although I knew now that “the unhappy woman” was not she whom I loved, it hurt me to hear her spoken of in that stern, condemnatory way; but I let it pass. I wanted to hear his version.