The large drawing-room was brilliantly lighted. Another weary day had dragged to its close. It was the Tuesday evening—the last Tuesday in March five years ago. The starosta had not been near the castle all day. Steinmetz and Paul had never lost sight of the ladies since breakfast time. They had not ventured out of doors. There was in the atmosphere a sense of foreboding—the stillness of a crisis. Etta had been defiant and silent—a dangerous humor—all day. Maggie had watched Paul’s face with steadfast, quiet eyes full of courage, but she knew now that there was danger.
The conversation at breakfast and luncheon had been maintained by Steinmetz—always collected and a little humorous. It was now dinner time. The whole castle was brilliantly lighted, as if for a great assembly of guests. During the last week a fuller state—a greater ceremony—had been observed by Paul’s orders, and Steinmetz had thought more than once of that historical event which appealed to his admiration most—the Indian Mutiny.
Maggie was in the drawing-room alone. She was leaning one hand and arm on the mantel-piece, looking thoughtfully into the fire. The rustle of silk made her turn her head. It was Etta, beautifully dressed, with a white face and eyes dull with suspense.
“I think it is warmer to-night,” said Maggie, urged by a sudden necessity of speech, hampered by a sudden chill at the heart.
“Yes,” answered Etta. And she shivered.
For a moment there was a little silence and Etta looked at the clock. It was ten minutes to seven.
A high wind was blowing, the first of the equinoctial gales heralding the spring. The sound of the wind in the great chimney was like the moaning of high rigging at sea.
The door opened and Steinmetz came in. Etta’s face hardened, her lips closed with a snap. Steinmetz looked at her and at Maggie. For once he seemed to have no pleasantry ready for use. He walked toward a table where some books and newspapers lay in pleasant profusion. He was standing there when Paul came into the room. The prince glanced at Maggie. He saw where his wife stood, but he did not look at her.
Steinmetz was writing something on half a sheet of notepaper, in pencil. He pushed it across the table toward Paul, who drew it nearer to him.
“Are you armed?” were the written words.
Paul crushed the paper in the hollow of his hand and threw it into the fire, where it burned away. He also glanced at the clock. It was five minutes to seven.
Suddenly the door was thrown open and a manservant rushed in—pale, confused, terror-stricken. He was a giant footman in the gorgeous livery of the Alexis.
“Excellency,” he stammered in Russian, “the castle is surrounded—they will kill us—they will burn us out——”
He stopped abashed before Paul’s pointing finger and stony face.
“Leave the room!” said Paul. “You forget yourself.”
Through the open door-way to which Paul pointed peered the ashen faces of other servants huddled together like sheep.
“Leave the room!” repeated Paul, and the man obeyed him, walking to the door unsteadily with quivering chin. On the threshold he paused. Paul stood pointing to the door. He had a poise of the head—some sudden awakening of the blood that had coursed in the veins of hereditary potentates. Maggie looked at him; she had never known him like this. She had known the man, she had never encountered the prince.
The big clock over the castle boomed out the hour, and at the same instant there arose a roar like the voice of the surf on a Malabar shore. There was a crashing of glass almost in the room itself. Already Steinmetz was drawing the curtains closer over the windows in order to prevent the light from filtering through the interstices of the closed shutters.
“Only stones,” he said to Paul, with his grim smile; “it might have been bullets.”
As if in corroboration of his suggestion the sharp ring of more than one fire-arm rang out above the dull roar of many voices.
Steinmetz crossed the room to where Etta was standing, white-lipped, by the fire. Her clenched hand was gripping Maggie’s wrist. She was half hidden behind her cousin. Maggie was looking at Paul. Etta was obviously conscious of Steinmetz’s gaze and approach.
“I asked you before to tell me all you knew,” he said. “You refused. Will you do it now?”
Etta met his glance for a moment, shrugged her shoulders, and turned her back on him. Paul was standing in the open door-way with his back turned toward them—alone. The palace had never looked so vast as it did at that moment—brilliantly lighted, gorgeous, empty.
Through the hail of blows on the stout doors, the rattle of stones at the windows, the prince could hear yells of execration and the wild laughter that is bred of destruction. He turned and entered the room. His face was gray and terrible.
“They have no chance,” he said, “of effecting an entrance by force; the lower windows are barred. They have no ladders, Steinmetz and I have seen to that. We have been expecting this for some days.”
He turned toward Steinmetz as if seeking confirmation. The din was increasing. When the German spoke he had to shout.
“We can beat them back if we like. We can shoot them down from the windows. But”—he paused, shrugged his shoulders, and laughed—“what will you! This prince will not shoot his father’s serfs.”
“We must leave you,” went on Paul. “We must beware of treachery. Whatever happens, we shall not leave the house. If the worst comes, we make our last stand in this room. Whatever happens, stay here till we come.”
He left the room, followed by Steinmetz. There were only three doors in the impregnable stone walls; the great entrance, a side door for use in times of deep snow, and the small concealed entrance by which the starosta was in the habit of reaching his masters.
For a moment the two men stood at the head of the stairs listening to the wild commotion. They were turning to descend the state stairs when a piercing shriek, immediately drowned by a yell of triumph, broke the silence of the interior of the castle. There was a momentary stillness, followed by another shriek.
“They are in!” said Steinmetz. “The side door.”
And the two men looked at each other with wide eyes full of knowledge.
As they ran to the foot of the broad staircase the tramp of scuffling feet, the roar of angry voices, came through the passages from the back of curtained doorways. The servants’ quarters seemed to be pandemonium. The sounds approached.
“Half-way up!” said Paul, and they ran half-way up the broad staircase side by side. There they stood and waited.
In a moment the baize doors were burst open, and a scuffling mass of men and women poured into the hall—a very sewer of humanity.
A yell of execration signalized their recognition of the prince.
“They are mad!” said Steinmetz, as the crowd surged forward toward the stairs with waving arms and the dull gleam of steel; with wild faces turned upward, wild mouths bellowing hatred and murder.
“It is a chance—it may stop them!” said Steinmetz.
His arm was outstretched steadily. A loud report, a little puff of smoke shooting upward to the gilded ceiling, and for one brief moment the crowd stood still, watching one of their ringleaders, who was turning and twisting on his side half a dozen steps from the bottom.
The man writhed in silence with his hand to his breast, and the crowd stood aghast. He held up his hand and gazed at it with a queer stupefaction. The blood dripped from his fingers. Then his chin went up as if some one was gripping the back of his neck. He turned over slowly and rolled to the bottom of the stairs.
Then Paul raised his voice.
“Listen to me!” he said.
But he got no farther, for some one shot at him from the background, over the frantic heads of the others, and missed him. The bullet lodged in the wall at the head of the stairs, in the jamb of the gorgeous door-way. It is there to-day.
There was a yell of hatred, and an ugly charge toward the stairs; but the sight of the two revolvers held them there—motionless for a few moments. Those in front pushed back, while the shouters in the safe background urged them forward by word and gesture.
Two men holding a hundred in check! But one of the two was a prince, which makes all the difference, and will continue to make that difference, despite halfpenny journalism, until the end of the world.
“What do you want?” cried Paul.
“Oh, I will wait!” he shouted, in the next pause. “There is plenty of time—when you are tired of shouting.”
Several of them proceeded to tell him what they wanted. An old story, too stale for repetition here. Paul recognized in the din of many voices the tinkling arguments of the professional agitator all the world over—the cry of “Equality! Equality!” when men are obviously created unequal.
“Look out!” said Paul; “I believe they are going to make a rush.”
All the while the foremost men were edging toward the stairs, while the densely packed throng at the back were struggling among themselves. In the passages behind, some were yelling and screaming with a wild intonation which Steinmetz recognized. He had been through the Commune.
“Those fellows at the back have been killing some one,” he said; “I can tell by their voices. They are drunk with the sight of blood.”
Some new orator gained the ears of the rabble at this moment, and the ill-kempt heads swayed from side to side.
“It is useless,” he cried, “telling him what you want. He will not give it you. Go and take it! Go and take it, little fathers; that is the only way!”
Steinmetz raised his hand and peered down into the crowd, looking for the man of eloquence, and the voice was hushed.
At this moment, however, the yelling increased, and through the door-way leading to the servants’ quarters came a stream of men—bloodstained, ragged, torn. They were waving arms and implements above their heads.
“Down with the aristocrats! kill them—kill them!” they were shrieking.
A little volley of fire-arms further excited them. But vodka is not a good thing to shoot upon, and Paul stood untouched, waiting, as he had said, until they were tired of shouting.
“Now,” yelled Steinmetz to him in English, “we must go. We can make a stand at the head of the stairs, then the door-way, then——” He shrugged his shoulders. “Then—the end,” he added, as they moved up the stairs step by step, backward. “My very good friend,” he went on, “at the door we must begin to shoot them down. It is our only chance. It is, moreover, our duty toward the ladies.”
“There is one alternative,” answered Paul.
“The Moscow Doctor?”
“Yes.”
“They may turn,” said Paul; “they are just in that humor.”
The new-comers were the most dangerous. They were forcing their way to the front. There was no doubt that, as soon as they could penetrate the densely packed mob, they would charge up the stairs, even in face of a heavy fire. The reek of vodka was borne up in the heated atmosphere, mingled with the nauseating odor of filthy clothing.
“Go,” said Steinmetz, “and put on your doctor’s clothes. I can keep them back for a few minutes.”
There was no time to be lost. Paul slipped away, leaving Steinmetz alone at the summit of the state stairway, standing grimly, revolver in hand.
In the drawing-room Paul found Maggie, alone.
“Where is Etta?” he asked.
“She left the room some time ago.”
“But I told her to stay,” said Paul.
To this Maggie made no answer. She was looking at him with an anxious scrutiny.
“Did they shoot at you?” she asked.
“Yes; but not straight,” he answered, with a little laugh, as he hurried on.
In a few moments he was back in the drawing-room, a different man, in the rough, stained clothes of the Moscow Doctor. The din on the stairs was louder. Steinmetz was almost in the door-way. He was shooting economically, picking his men.
With an effort Paul dragged one or two heavy pieces of furniture across the room, in the form of a rough barricade. He pointed to the hearthrug where Maggie was to stand.
“Ready!” he shouted to Steinmetz. “Come!”
The German ran in, and Paul closed the barricade.
The rabble poured in at the open door, screaming and shouting. Bloodstained, ragged, wild with the madness of murder, they crowded to the barricade. There they stopped, gazing stupidly at Paul.
“The Moscow Doctor—the Moscow Doctor!” passed from lip to lip. It was the women who shouted it the loudest. Like the wind through a forest it swept out of the room and down the stairs. Those crowding up pushed on and uttered the words as they came. The room was packed with them.
“Yes!” shouted Steinmetz, at the top of his great voice, “and the prince!”
He knew the note to strike, and struck with a sure hand. The barricade was torn aside, and the people swept forward, falling on their knees, grovelling at Paul’s feet, kissing the hem of his garment, seizing his strong hands in theirs.
It was a mighty harvest. That which is sown in the people’s hearts bears a thousandfold at last.
“Get them out of the place—open the big doors,” said Paul to Steinmetz. He stood cold and grave among them.
Some of them were already sneaking toward the door—the ringleaders, the talkers from the towns—mindful of their own necks in this change of feeling.
Steinmetz hustled them out, bidding them take their dead with them. Some of the servants reappeared, peeping, white-faced, behind curtains. When the last villager had crossed the threshold, these ran forward to close and bar the great doors.
“No,” said Paul, from the head of the stairs, “leave them open.”
So the great doors stood defiantly open. The lights of the state staircase flared out over the village as the peasants crept crest-fallen to their cottages. They glanced up shamefacedly, but they had no word to say.
Steinmetz, in the drawing-room, looked at Paul with his resigned semi-humorous shrug of the shoulders.
“Touch-and-go, mein lieber!” he said.
“Yes; an end of Russia for us,” answered the prince.
He moved toward the door leading through to the old castle.
“I am going to look for Etta,” he said.
“And I,” said Steinmetz, going to the other entrance, “am going to see who opened the side door.”
“Will you come with me?” said Paul to Maggie. “I will send the servants to put this room to rights.”
Maggie followed him out of the room, and together they went through the passages, calling Etta and looking for her. There was an air of gloom and chilliness in the rooms of the old castle. The outline of the great stones, dimly discernible through the wall-paper, was singularly suggestive of a fortress thinly disguised.
“I suppose,” said Paul, “that Etta lost her nerve.”
“Yes,” answered Maggie doubtfully; “I think it was that.”
Paul went on. He carried a lamp in one steady hand.
“We shall probably find her in one of these rooms,” he said. “It is so easy to lose one’s self among the passages and staircases.”
They passed on through the great smoking-room, with its hunting trophies. The lynx, with its face of Claude de Chauxville, grinned at them darkly from its pedestal.
Half-way down the stairs leading to the side door they met Steinmetz coming hastily up. His face was white and drawn with horror.
“You must not go down here,” he said, in a husky voice, barring the passage with his arm.
“Why not?”
“Go up again!” said Steinmetz breathlessly. “You must not go down here.”
Paul laid his hand on the broad arm stretched across the stairway. For a moment it almost appeared to be a physical struggle, then Steinmetz stepped aside.
“I beg of you,” he said, “not to go down.”
And Paul went on, followed by Steinmetz, and behind them, Maggie. At the foot of the stairs a broader passage led to the side door, and from this other passages opened into the servants’ quarters, and communicated through the kitchens with the modern building.
It was evident that the door leading to the grassy slope at the back of the castle was open, for a cold wind blew up the stairs and made the lamps flicker.
At the end of the passage Paul stopped.
Steinmetz was a little behind him, holding Maggie back.
The two lamps lighted up the passage and showed the white form of the Princess Etta lying huddled up against the wall. The face was hidden, but there was no mistaking the beautiful dress and hair. It could only be Etta. Paul stooped down and looked at her, but he did not touch her. He went a few paces forward and closed the door. Beyond Etta a black form lay across the passage, all trodden underfoot and dishevelled. Paul held the lamp down, and through the mud and blood Claude de Chauxville’s clear-cut features were outlined.
Death is always unmistakable, though it be shown by nothing more than a heap of muddy clothes.
Claude de Chauxville was lying across the passage. He had been trodden underfoot by the stream of maddened peasants who had entered by this door which had been opened for them, whom Steinmetz had checked at the foot of the stairs by shooting their ringleader.
De Chauxville’s scalp was torn away by a blow, probably given with a spade or some blunt instrument. His hand, all muddy and bloodstained, still held a revolver.
The other hand was stretched out toward Etta, who lay across his feet, crouching against the wall. Death had found and left her in an attitude of fear, shielding her bowed head from a blow with her upraised hands. Her loosened hair fell in a long wave of gold down to the bloodstained hand outstretched toward her. She was kneeling in De Chauxville’s blood, which stained the stone floor of the passage.
Paul leaned forward and laid his fingers on the bare arm, just below a bracelet which gleamed in the lamplight. She was quite dead. He held a lamp close to her. There was no mark or scratch upon her arm or shoulder. The blow which had torn her hair down had killed her without any disfigurement. The silken skirt of her dress, which lay across the passage, was trampled and stained by the tread of a hundred feet.
Then Paul went to Claude de Chauxville. He stooped down and slipped his skilled fingers inside the torn and mud-stained clothing. Here also was death.
Paul stood upright and looked at them as they lay, silent, motionless, with their tale untold. Maggie and Steinmetz stood watching him. He went to the door, which was of solid oak four inches thick, and examined the fastenings. There had been no damage done to bolt, or lock, or hinge. The door had been opened from the inside. He looked slowly round, measuring the distances.
“What is the meaning of it?” he said at length to Steinmetz, in a dull voice. Maggie winced at the sound of it.
Steinmetz did not answer at once, but hesitated—after the manner of a man weighing words which will never be forgotten by their hearers.
“It seems to me,” he said, with a slow, wise charity, the best of its kind, “quite clear that De Chauxville died in trying to save her—the rest must be only guesswork.”
Maggie had come forward and was standing beside him.
“And in guessing let us be charitable—is it not so?” he said, turning to her, with a twist of his humorous lips.
“I suppose,” he went on, after a little pause, “that Claude de Chauxville has been at the bottom of all our trouble. All his life he has been one of the stormy petrels of diplomacy. Wherever he has gone trouble has followed later. By some means he obtained sufficient mastery over the princess to compel her to obey his orders. The means he employed were threats. He had it in his power to make mischief, and in such affairs a woman is so helpless that we may well forgive that which she may do in a moment of panic. I imagine that he frightened the poor lady into obedience to his command that she should open this door. Before dinner, when we were all in the drawing-room, I noted a little mark of dust on the white silk skirt of her dress. At the time I thought only that her maid had been careless. Perhaps you noticed it, mademoiselle? Ladies note such things.”
He turned to Maggie, who nodded her head.
“That,” he went on, “was the dust of these old passages. She had been down here. She had opened this door.”
He spread out his hands in deprecation. In his quaint Germanic way he held one hand out over the two motionless forms in mute prayer that they might be forgiven.
“We all have our faults,” he said. “Who are we to judge each other? If we understood all, we might pardon. The two strongest human motives are ambition and fear. She was ruled by both. I myself have seen her under the influence of sudden panic. I have noted the working of her great ambition. She was probably deceived at every turn by that man, who was a scoundrel. He is dead, and death is understood to wipe out all debts. If I were a better man than I am, I might speak well of him. But—ach Gott! that man was a scoundrel! I think the good God will judge between them and forgive that poor woman. She must have repented of her action when she heard the clatter of the rioters all round the castle. I am sure she did that. I am sure she came down here to shut the door, and found Claude de Chauxville here. They were probably talking together when the poor mad fools who killed them came round to this side of the castle and found them. They recognized her as the princess. They probably mistook him for the prince. It is what men call a series of coincidences. I wonder what God calls it?”
He broke off, and, stooping down, he drew the lapel of the Frenchman’s cloak gently over the marred face.
“And let us remember,” he said, “that he tried to save her. Some lives are so. At the very end a little reparation is made. In life he was her evil genius. When he died they trampled him underfoot in order to reach her. Mademoiselle, will you come?”
He took Maggie by the arm and led her gently away. She was shaking all over, but his hand was steady and wholly kind.
He led her up the narrow stairs to her own room. In the little boudoir the fire was burning brightly; the lamps were lighted, just as the maid had left them at the first alarm.
Maggie sat down, and quite suddenly she burst into tears.
Steinmetz did not leave her. He stood beside her, gently stroking her shoulder with his stout fingers. He said nothing, but the gray mustache only half concealed his lips, which were twisted with a little smile full of tenderness and sympathy.
Maggie was the first to speak.
“I am all right now,” she said. “Please do not wait any longer, and do not think me a very weak-minded person. Poor Etta!”
Steinmetz moved away toward the door.
“Yes,” he said; “poor Etta! It is often those who get on in the world who need the world’s pity most.”
At the door he stopped.
“To-morrow,” he said, “I will take you home to England. Is that agreeable to you, mademoiselle?”
She smiled at him sadly through her tears.
“Yes, I should like that,” she said. “This country is horrible. You are very kind to me.”
Steinmetz went down stairs and found Paul at the door talking to a young officer, who slowly dismounted and lounged into the hall, conscious of his brilliant uniform—of his own physical capacity to show off any uniform to full advantage.
He was a lieutenant in a Cossack regiment, and as he bowed to Steinmetz, whom Paul introduced, he swung off his high astrakhan cap with a flourish, showing a fair boyish face.
“Yes,” he continued to Paul in English; “the general sent me over with a sotnia of men, and pretty hungry you will find them. We have covered the whole distance since daybreak. A report reached the old gentleman that the whole countryside was about to rise against you.”
“Who spread the report?” asked Steinmetz.
“I believe it originated down at the wharfs. It has been traced to an old man and his daughter,—a sort of pedler, I think, who took a passage down the river,—but where they heard the rumor I don’t know.”
Paul and Steinmetz carefully avoided looking at each other. They knew that Catrina and Stipan Lanovitch had sent back assistance.
“Of course,” said Paul, “I am very glad to see you, but I am equally glad to inform you that you are not wanted. Steinmetz will tell you all about it, and when you are ready for dinner it will be ready for you. I will give instructions that the men be cared for.”
“Thanks. The funny thing is that I am instructed, with your approval, to put the place under martial law and take charge.”
“That will not be necessary, thanks,” answered Paul, going out of the open door to speak to the wild-looking Cossacks sent for his protection.
In Russia, as in other countries where life is cheaply held, the death formalities are small. It is only in England, where we are so careful for the individual and so careless of the type, that we have to pay for dying, and leave a mass of red-tape formalities for our friends.
While the young officer was changing his uniform for the evening finery which his servant’s forethought had provided, Paul and Steinmetz hurriedly arranged what story of the evening should be given to the world. Knowing the country as they did, they were enabled to tell a true tale, which was yet devoid of that small personal interest that gossips love. And all the world ever knew was that the Princess Howard Alexis was killed by the revolted peasants while attempting to escape by a side door, and that the Baron Claude de Chauxville, who was staying in the neighborhood, met his death in attempting to save her from the fury of the mob.
On the recommendation of Karl Steinmetz, Paul placed the castle and village under martial law, and there and then gave the command to the young Cossack officer, pending further instructions from his general, commanding at Tver.
The officer dined with Steinmetz, and under the careful treatment of that diplomatist inaugurated a reign of military autocracy, which varied pleasingly between strict discipline and boyish neglect.
Before the master of the situation had slept off the effect of his hundred-mile ride and a heavy dinner, the next morning Steinmetz and Maggie were ready to start on their journey to England.
The breakfast was served in the room abutting on the cliff in the dim light of a misty morning.
The lamps were alight on the table, and Paul was waiting when Maggie came down cloaked for her journey. Steinmetz had breakfasted.
They said good-morning, and managed to talk of ordinary things until Maggie was supplied with coffee and toast and a somewhat heavy, manly helping of a breakfast-dish. Then came a silence.
Paul broke it at length with an effort, standing, as it were, on the edge of the forbidden topic.
“Steinmetz will take you all the way,” he said, “and then come back to me. You can safely trust yourself to his care.”
“Yes,” answered the girl, looking at the food set before her with a helpless stare. “It is not that. Can I safely trust Etta’s memory to your judgment? You are very stern, Paul. I think you might easily misjudge her. Men do not always understand a woman’s temptations.”
Paul had not sat down. He walked away to the window, and stood there looking out into the gloomy mists.
“It is not because she was my cousin,” said Maggie from the table; “it is because she was a woman leaving her memory to be judged by two men who are both—hard.”
Paul neither looked round nor answered.
“When a woman has to form her own life, and renders it a prominent one, she usually makes a huge mistake of it,” said the girl.
She waited a moment, and then she pleaded once more, hastily, for she heard a step approaching.
“If you only understood every thing you might think differently—it is because you cannot understand.”
Then Paul turned round slowly.
“No,” he said, “I cannot understand it, and I do not think that I ever shall.”
And Steinmetz came into the room.
In a few minutes the sleigh bearing Steinmetz and Maggie disappeared into the gloom, closely followed by a couple of Cossacks acting as guard and carrying despatches.
So Etta Sydney Bamborough—the Princess Howard Alexis—came back after all to her husband, lying in a nameless grave in the churchyard by the Volga at Tver. Within the white walls—beneath the shadow of the great spangled cupola—they await the Verdict, almost side by side.
Between Brandon in Suffolk and Thetford in Norfolk runs a quiet river, the Little Ouse, where few boats break the stillness of the water. On either bank stand whispering beech-trees, and so low is the music of the leaves that the message of Ely’s distant bells floats through them on a quiet evening as far as Brandon and beyond it.
Three years after Etta’s death, in the glow of an April sunset, a Canadian canoe was making its stealthy way up the river. The paddle crept in and out so gently, so lazily and peacefully, that the dabchicks and other waterfowl did not cease their chatter of nests and other April matters as the canoe glided by.
So quiet, indeed, was its progress that Karl Steinmetz—suddenly white-headed, as strong old men are apt to find themselves—did not heed its approach. He was sitting on the bank with a gun, a little rifle, lying on the grass beside him. He was half-asleep in the enjoyment of a large Havana cigar. The rays of the setting sun, peeping through the lower branches, made him blink lazily like a large, good-natured cat.
He turned his head slowly, with a hunter’s consciousness of the approach of some one, and contemplated the canoe with a sense of placid satisfaction.
The small craft was passing in the shadow of a great tree—stealing over the dark, unruffled depth. A girl dressed in white, with a large diaphanous white hat and a general air of brisk English daintiness, was paddling slowly and with no great skill.
“A picture,” said Steinmetz to himself with Teutonic deliberation. “Gott im Himmel! what a pretty picture to make an old man young!”
Then his gray eyes opened suddenly and he rose to his feet.
“Coloss-a-al!” he muttered. He dragged from his head a lamentable old straw hat and swept a courteous bow.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, “ah, what happiness! After three years!”
Maggie stopped and looked at him with troubled eyes; all the color slowly left her face.
“What are you doing here?” she asked. And there was something like fear in her voice.
“No harm, mademoiselle, but good. I have come down from big game to vermin. I have here a saloon rifle. I wait till a water-rat comes, and then I shoot him.”
The canoe had drifted closer to the land, the paddle trailing in the water.
“You are looking at my white hairs,” he went on, in a sudden need of conversation. “Please bring your boat a little nearer.”
The paddle twisted lazily in the water like a fish’s tail.
“Hold tight,” he said, reaching down.
With a little laugh he lifted the canoe and its occupant far up on to the bank.
“Despite my white hairs,” he said, with a tap of both hands on his broad chest.
“I attach no importance to them,” she answered, taking his proffered hand and stepping over the light bulwark. “I have gray ones myself. I am getting old too.”
“How old?” he asked, looking down at her with his old bluntness.
“Twenty-eight.”
“Ah, they are summers,” he said; “mine have turned to winters. Will you sit here where I was sitting? See, I will spread this rug for your white dress.”
Maggie paused, looking through the trees toward the sinking sun. The light fell on her face and showed one or two lines which had not been there before. It showed a patient tenderness in the steady eyes which had always been there—which Catrina had noticed in the stormy days that were past.
“I cannot stay long,” she replied. “I am with the Faneaux at Brandon for a few days. They dine at seven.”
“Ah! her ladyship is a good friend of mine. You remember her charity ball in town, when it was settled that you should come to Osterno. A strange world, mademoiselle—a very strange world, so small, and yet so large and bare for some of us!”
Maggie looked at him. Then she sat down.
“Tell me,” she said, “all that has happened since then.”
“I went back,” answered Steinmetz, “and we were duly exiled from Russia. It was sure to come. We were too dangerous. Altogether too quixotic for an autocracy. For myself I did not mind, but it hurt Paul.”
There was a little pause, while the water lapped and whispered at their feet.
“I heard,” said Maggie at length, in a measured voice, “that he had gone abroad for big game.”
“Yes—to India.”
“He did not go to America?” enquired Maggie indifferently. She was idly throwing fragments of wood into the river.
“No,” answered Steinmetz, looking straight in front of him. “No, he did not go to America.”
“And you?”
“I—oh, I stayed at home. I have taken a house. It is behind the trees. You cannot see it. I live at peace with all men and pay my bills every week. Sometimes Paul comes and stays with me. Sometimes I go and stay with him in London or in Scotland. I smoke and shoot water-rats, and watch the younger generation making the same mistakes that we made in our time. You have heard that my country is in order again? They have remembered me. For my sins they have made me a count. Bon Dieu! I do not mind. They may make me a prince, if it pleases them.”
He was watching her face beneath his grim old eyebrows.
“These details bore you,” he said.
“No.”
“When Paul and I are together we talk of a new heaven and a new Russia. But it will not come in our time. We are only the sowers, and the harvest is not yet. But I tell Paul that he has not sown wild oats, nor sour grapes, nor thistles.”
He paused, and the expression of his face changed to one of semi-humorous gravity.
“Mademoiselle,” he went on, “it has been my lot to love the prince like a son. It has been my lot to stand helplessly by while he passed through many troubles. Perhaps the good God gave him all his troubles at first. Do you think so?”
Maggie was looking straight in front of her across the quiet river.
“Perhaps so,” she said.
Steinmetz also stared in front of him during a little silence. The common thoughts of two minds may well be drawn together by the contemplation of a common object. Then he turned toward her.
“It will be a happiness for him to see you,” he said quietly.
Maggie ceased breaking small branches and throwing them into the river. She ceased all movement, and scarcely seemed to breathe.
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“He is staying with me here.”
Maggie glanced toward the canoe. She drew a short, sharp breath, but she did not move.
“Mademoiselle,” said Steinmetz earnestly, “I am an old man, and in my time I have dabbled pretty deeply in trouble. But taking it all around, even my life has had its compensations. And I have seen lives which, taken as a mere mortal existence, without looking to the hereafter at all, have been quite worth the living. There is much happiness in life to make up for the rest. But that happiness must be firmly held. It is so easily slipped through the fingers. A little irresolution—a little want of moral courage—a little want of self-confidence—a little pride, and it is lost. You follow me?”
Maggie nodded. There was a great tenderness in her eyes—such a tenderness as, resting on men, may bring them nearer to the angels.
Steinmetz laid his large hand over hers.
“Mademoiselle,” he went on, “I believe that the good God sent you along this lonely river in your boat. Paul leaves me to-morrow. His arrangements are to go to India and shoot tigers. He will sail in a week. There are things of which we never speak together—there is one name that is never mentioned. Since Osterno you have avoided meeting him. God knows I am not asking for him any thing that he would be afraid to ask for himself. But he also has his pride. He will not force himself in where he thinks his presence unwelcome.”
Steinmetz rose somewhat ponderously and stood looking down at her. He did not, however, succeed in meeting her eyes.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, “I beg of you most humbly—most respectfully—to come through the garden with me toward the house, so that Paul may at least know that you are here.”
He moved away and stood for a moment with his back turned to her, looking toward the house. The crisp rustle of her dress came to him as she rose to her feet.
Without looking round, he walked slowly on. The path through the trees was narrow, two could not walk abreast. After a few yards Steinmetz emerged on to a large, sloping lawn with flower beds, and a long, low house above it. On the covered terrace a man sat writing at a table. He was surrounded by papers, and the pen in his large, firm hand moved rapidly over the sheet before him.
“We still administer the estate,” said Steinmetz, in a low voice. “From our exile we still sow our seed.”
They approached over the mossy turf, and presently Paul looked up—a strong face, stern and self-contained; the face of a man who would always have a purpose in life, who would never be petty in thought or deed.
For a moment he did not seem to recognize them. Then he rose, and the pen fell on the flags of the terrace.
“It is mademoiselle!” said Steinmetz, and no other word was spoken.
Maggie walked on in a sort of unconsciousness. She only knew that they were all acting an inevitable part, written for them in the great libretto of life. She never noticed that Steinmetz had left her side, that she was walking across the lawn alone.
Paul came to meet her, and took her hand in silence. There was so much to say that words seemed suddenly valueless; there was so little to say that they were unnecessary.
For that which these two had to tell each other cannot be told in minutes, nor yet in years; it cannot even be told in a lifetime, for it is endless, and it runs through eternity.