A tearing, howling wind from the north—from the boundless snow-clad plains of Russia that lie between the Neva and the Yellow Sea; a gray sky washed over as with a huge brush dipped in dirty whitening; and the plains of Tver a spotless, dazzling level of snow.
The snow was falling softly and steadily, falling, as it never falls in England, in little more than fine powder, with a temperature forty degrees below freezing-point. A drift—constant, restless, never altering—sped over the level plain like the dust on a high-road before a steady wind. This white scud—a flying scud of frozen water—was singularly like the scud that is blown from the crest of the waves by a cyclone in the China Seas. Any object that broke the wind—a stunted pine, a broken tree-trunk, a Government road-post—had at its leeward side a high, narrow snow-drift tailing off to the dead level of the plain. Where the wind dropped the snow rose at once. But these objects were few and far between. The deadly monotony of the scene—the trackless level, the preposterous dimensions of the plain, the sense of distance that is conveyed only by the steppe and the great desert of Gobi when the snow lies on it—all these tell the same grim truth to all who look on them: the old truth that man is but a small thing and his life but as the flower of the grass.
Across the plain of Tver, before the north wind, a single sleigh was tearing as fast as horse could lay hoof to ground—a sleigh driven by Paul Howard Alexis, and the track of it was as a line drawn from point to point across a map.
A striking feature of the winter of Northern Russia is the glorious uncertainty of its snowfalls. At Tver the weather-wise had said:
“The snow has not all fallen yet. More is coming. It is yellow in the sky, although March is nearly gone.”
The landlord of the hotel (a good enough resting-place facing the broad Volga) had urged upon M. le Prince the advisability of waiting, as is the way of landlords all the world over. But Etta had shown a strange restlessness, a petulant desire to hurry forward at all risks. She hated Tver; the hotel was uncomfortable, there was an unhealthy smell about the place.
Paul acceded readily enough to her wishes. He rather liked Tver. In a way he was proud of this busy town—a centre of Russian civilization. He would have liked Etta to be favorably impressed with it, as any prejudice would naturally reflect upon Osterno, 140 miles across the steppe. But with a characteristic silent patience he made the necessary preparations for an immediate start.
The night express from St. Petersburg had deposited them on the platform in the early morning. Steinmetz had preceded them. Closed sleighs from Osterno were awaiting them. A luxurious breakfast was prepared at the hotel. Relays of horses were posted along the road. The journey to Osterno had been carefully planned and arranged by Steinmetz—a king among organizers. The sleigh drive across the steppe was to be accomplished in ten hours.
The snow had begun to fall as they clattered across the floating bridge of Tver. It had fallen ever since, and the afternoon lowered gloomily. In America such visitations are called “blizzards”; here in Russia it is merely “the snow.” The freezing wind is taken as a matter of course.
At a distance of one hundred miles from Tver, the driver of the sleigh containing Etta, Maggie, and Paul had suddenly rolled off his perch. His hands were frostbitten; a piteous blue face peered out at his master through ice-laden eyebrows, mustache, and beard. In a moment Maggie was out in the snow beside the two men, while Etta hastily closed the door.
“He is all right,” said Paul; “it is only the cold. Pour some brandy into his mouth while I hold the ice aside.Don’ttake off your gloves. The flask will stick to your fingers.”
Maggie obeyed with her usual breezy readiness, turning to nod reassurance to Etta, who, truth to tell, had pulled up the rime-covered windows, shutting out the whole scene.
“He must come inside,” said Maggie. “We are nice and warm with all the hot-water cans.”
Paul looked rather dubiously toward the sleigh.
“You can carry him, I suppose?” said the girl cheerfully. “He is not very big—he is all fur coat.”
Etta looked rather disgusted, but made no objection, while Paul lifted the frozen man into the seat he had just vacated.
“When you are cold I will drive,” cried Maggie, as Paul shut the door. “I should love it.”
Thus it came about that a single sleigh was speeding across the plain of Tver.
Paul, with the composure that comes of a large experience, gathered the reins in his two hands, driving with both and with extended arms, after the manner of Russian yemschiks. For a man must accommodate himself to circumstance, and fingerless gloves are not conducive to a finished style of handling the ribbons.
This driver knew that the next station was twenty miles off; that at any moment the horses might break down or plunge into a drift. He knew that in the event of such emergencies it would be singularly easy for four people to die of cold within a few miles of help. But he had faced such possibilities a hundred times before in this vast country, where the standard price of a human life is no great sum. He was not, therefore, dismayed, but rather took delight in battling with the elements, as all strong men should, and most of them, thank Heaven, do.
Moreover he battled successfully, and before the moon was well up drew rein outside the village of Osterno, to accede at last to the oft-repeated prayer of the driver that he might return to his task.
“It is not meet,” the man had gruffly said, whenever a short halt was made to change horses, “that a great prince should drive a yemschik.”
“It is meet,” answered Paul simply, “for one man to help another.”
Then this man of deeds and not of words clambered into the sleigh and drew up the windows, hiding his head as he drove through his own village, where every man was dependent for life and being on his charity.
They were silent, for the ladies were tired and cold.
“We shall soon be there,” said Paul reassuringly. But he did not lower the windows and look out, as any man might have wished to do on returning to the place of his birth.
Maggie sat back, wrapped in her furs. She was meditating over the events of the day, and more particularly over a certain skill, a quickness of touch, a deft handling of stricken men which she had noted far out on the snowy steppe a few hours earlier. Paul was a different man when he had to deal with pain and sickness; he was quicker, brighter, full of confidence in himself. For the great sympathy was his—that love of the neighbor which is thrown like a mantle over the shoulders of some men, making them different from their fellows, securing to them that love of great and small which, perchance, follows some when they are dead to that place where a human testimony may not be all in vain.
At the castle all was in readiness for the prince and princess, their departure from Tver having been telegraphed. On the threshold of the great house, before she had entered the magnificent hall, Etta’s eyes brightened, her fatigue vanished. She played her part before the crowd of bowing servants with that forgetfulness of mere bodily fatigue which is expected of princesses and other great ladies. She swept up the broad staircase, leaning on Paul’s arm, with a carriage, a presence, a dazzling wealth of beauty, which did not fail to impress the onlookers. Whatever Etta may have failed to bring to Paul Howard Alexis as a wife, she made him a matchless princess.
He led her straight through the drawing-room to the suite of rooms which were hers. These consisted of an ante-room, a small drawing-room, and her private apartments beyond.
Paul stopped in the drawing-room, looking round with a simple satisfaction in all that had been done by his orders for Etta’s comfort.
“These,” he said, “are your rooms.”
He was no adept at turning a neat phrase—at reeling off a pretty honeymoon welcome. Perhaps he expected her to express delight, to come to him, possibly, and kiss him, as some women would have done.
She looked round critically.
“Yes,” she said, “they are very nice.”
She crossed the room and drew aside the curtain that covered the double-latticed windows. The room was so warm that there was no rime on the panes. She gave a little shudder, and he went to her side, putting his strong, quiet arm around her.
Below them, stretching away beneath the brilliant moonlight, lay the country that was his inheritance, an estate as large as a large English county. Immediately beneath them, at the foot of the great rock upon which the castle was built, nestled the village of Osterno—straggling, squalid.
“Oh!” she said dully, “this is Siberia; this is terrible!”
It had never presented itself to him in that light, the wonderful stretch of country over which they were looking.
“It is not so bad,” he said, “in the daylight.”
And that was all; for he had no persuasive tongue.
“That is the village,” he went on, after a little pause. “Those are the people who look to us to help them in their fight against terrible odds. I hoped—that you would be interested in them.”
She looked down curiously at the little wooden huts, half-buried in the snow; the smoking chimneys; the twinkling, curtainless windows.
“What do you expect me to do?” she asked in a queer voice.
He looked at her in a sort of wonderment. Perhaps it seemed to him that a woman should have no need to ask such a question.
“It is a long story,” he said; “I will tell you about it another time. You are tired now, after your journey.”
His arm slipped from her waist. They stood side by side. And both were conscious of a feeling of difference. They were not the same as they had been in London. The atmosphere of Russia seemed to have had some subtle effect upon them.
Etta turned and sat slowly down on a low chair before the fire. She had thrown her furs aside, and they lay in a luxurious heap on the floor. The maids, hearing that the prince and princess were together, waited silently in the next room behind the closed door.
“I think I had better hear it now,” said Etta.
“But you are tired,” protested her husband. “You had better rest until dinner-time.”
“No; I am not tired.”
He came toward her and stood with one elbow on the mantel-piece, looking down at her—a quiet, strong man, who had already forgotten his feat of endurance of a few hours earlier.
“These people,” he said, “would die of starvation and cold and sickness if we did not help them. It is simply impossible for them in the few months that they can work the land to cultivate it so as to yield any more than their taxes. They are overtaxed, and no one cares. The army must be kept up and a huge Civil Service, and no one cares what happens to the peasants. Some day the peasantsmustturn, but not yet. It is a question for all Russian land-owners to face, and nobody faces it. If any one tries to improve the condition of his peasants—they were happier a thousand times as serfs—the bureaucrats of Petersburg mark him down and he is forced to leave the country. The whole fabric of this Government is rotten, but every-one, except the peasants, would suffer by its fall, and therefore it stands.”
Etta was staring into the fire. It was impossible to say whether she heard with comprehension or not. Paul went on:
“There is nothing left, therefore, but to go and do good by stealth. I studied medicine with that view. Steinmetz has scraped and economized the working of the estate for the same purpose. The Government will not allow us to have a doctor; they prevent us from organizing relief and education on anything like an adequate scale. They do it all by underhand means. They have not the pluck to oppose us openly! For years we have been doing what we can. We have almost eradicated cholera. They do not die of starvation now. And they are learning—very slowly, but still they are learning. We—I—thought you might be interested in your people; you might want to help.”
She gave a short little nod. There was a suggestion of suspense in her whole being and attitude, as if she were waiting to hear something which she knew could not be avoided.
“A few years ago,” he went on, “a gigantic scheme was set on foot. I told you a little about it—the Charity League.”
Her lips moved, but no sound came from them, so she nodded a second time. A tiny carriage-clock on the mantel-piece struck seven, and she looked up in a startled way, as if the sound had frightened her. The castle was quite still. Silence seemed to brood over the old walls.
“That fell through,” he went on, “as I told you. It was betrayed. Stipan Lanovitch was banished. He has escaped, however; Steinmetz has seen him. He succeeded in destroying some of the papers before the place was searched after the robbery—one paper in particular. If he had not destroyed that, I should have been banished. I was one of the leaders of the Charity League. Steinmetz and I got the thing up. It would have been for the happiness of millions of peasants if it had not been betrayed. In time—we shall find out who did it.”
He paused. He did not say what he would do when he had found out.
Etta was staring into the fire. Her lips were dry. She hardly seemed to be breathing.
“It is possible,” he went on in his strong, quiet, inexorable voice, “that Stipan Lanovitch knows now.”
Etta did not move. She was staring into the fire—staring—staring.
Then she slowly fainted, rolling from the low chair to the fur hearth-rug.
Paul picked her up like a child and carried her to the bedroom, where the maids were waiting to dress her.
“Here,” he said, “your mistress has fainted from the fatigue of the journey.”
And, with his practised medical knowledge, he himself tended her.
“Always gay; always gay!” laughed Steinmetz, rubbing his broad hands together and looking down into the face of Maggie, who was busy at the breakfast-table.
“Yes,” answered the girl, glancing toward Paul, leaning against the window reading his letters. “Yes, always gay. Why not?”
Karl Steinmetz saw the glance. It was one of the little daily incidents that one sees and half forgets. He only half forgot it.
“Why not, indeed?” he answered. “And you will be glad to hear that Ivanovitch is as ready as yourself this morning to treat the matter as a joke. He is none the worse for his freezing, and all the better for his experience. You have added another friend, my dear young lady, to a list which is, doubtless, a very long one.”
“He is a nice man,” answered Maggie. “How is it,” she asked, after a little pause, “that there are more men in the lower classes whom one can call nice than among their betters?”
Paul paused between two letters, hearing the question. He looked up as if interested in the answer, but did not join in the conversation.
“Because dealing with animals and with nature is more conducive to niceness than too much trafficking with human beings,” replied Steinmetz promptly.
“I suppose that is it,” said Maggie, lifting the tea-pot lid and looking in. “At all events, it is the sort of answer one might expect from you. You are always hard on human nature.”
“I take it as I find it,” replied Steinmetz, with a laugh, “but I do not worry about it like some people. Now, Paul would like to alter the course of the world.”
As he spoke he half turned toward Paul, as if suggesting that he should give an opinion, and this little action had the effect of putting a stop to the conversation. Maggie had plenty to say to Steinmetz, but toward Paul her mental attitude was different. She was probably unaware of this little fact.
“There,” she said, after a pause, “I have obeyed Etta’s instructions. She does not want us to begin, I suppose?”
“No,” replied Paul. “She will be down in a minute.”
“I hope the princess is not overtired,” said Steinmetz, with a certain formal politeness which seemed to accompany any mention of Etta’s name.
“Not at all, thank you,” replied Etta herself, coming into the room at that moment. She looked fresh and self-confident. “On the contrary, I am full of energy and eagerness to explore the castle. One naturally takes an interest in one’s baronial halls.”
With this she walked slowly across to the window. She stood there looking out, and every one in the room was watching. On looking for the first time on the same view, a few moments earlier, Maggie had uttered a little cry of surprise, and had then remained silent. Etta looked out of the window and said nothing. It was a most singular out-look—weird, uncouth, prehistoric, as some parts of the earth still are. The castle was built on the edge of a perpendicular cliff. On this side it was impregnable. Any object dropped from the breakfast-room window would fall a clear two hundred feet to the brawling Oster River. The rock was black, and shining like the topmost crags of an Alpine mountain where snow and ice have polished the bare stone. Beyond and across the river lay the boundless steppe—a sheet of virgin snow.
Etta stood looking over this to the far horizon, where the white snow and the gray sky softly merged into one. Her first remark was characteristic, as first and last remarks usually are.
“And as far as you can see is yours?” she asked.
“Yes,” answered Paul simply, with that calm which only comes with hereditary possession.
The observation attracted Steinmetz’s attention. He went to another window, and looked across the waste critically.
“Four times as far as we can see is his,” he said.
Etta looked out slowly and comprehensively, absorbing it all like a long, sweet drink. There was no hereditary calmness in her sense of possession.
“And where is Thors?” she asked.
Paul stretched out his arm, pointing with a lean, steady finger:
“It lies out there,” he answered.
Another of the little incidents that are only half forgotten. Some of the persons assembled in that room remembered the pointing finger long afterward.
“It makes one feel very small,” said Etta, turning to the breakfast-table—“at no time a pleasant sensation. Do you know,” she said, after a little pause, “I think it probable that I shall become very fond of Osterno, but I wish it was nearer to civilization.”
Paul looked pleased. Steinmetz had a queer expression on his face. Maggie murmured something about one’s surroundings making but little difference to one’s happiness, and the subject was wisely shelved.
After breakfast Steinmetz withdrew.
“Now,” said Paul, “shall I show you the old place, you and Maggie?”
Etta signified her readiness, but Maggie said that she had letters to write, that Etta could show her the castle another time, when the men were out shooting, perhaps.
“But,” said Etta, “I shall do it horribly badly. They are not my ancestors, you know. I shall attach the stories to the wrong people, and locate the ghost in the wrong room. You will be wise to take Paul’s guidance.”
“No, thank you,” replied Maggie, quite firmly and frankly. “I feel inclined to write; and the feeling is rare, so I must take advantage of it.”
The girl looked at her cousin with something in her honest blue eyes that almost amounted to wonder. Etta was always surprising her. There was a whole gamut of feeling, an octave of callow, half-formed girlish instincts, of which Etta seemed to be deprived. If she had ever had them, no trace was left of their whilom presence. At first Maggie had flatly refused to come to Russia. When Paul pressed her to do so, she accepted with a sort of wonder. There was something which she did not understand.
The same instinct made her refuse now to accompany Paul and Etta over their new home. Again Etta pressed her, showing her lack of some feeling which Maggie indefinitely knew she ought to have had. This time Paul made no sign. He added no word to Etta’s persuasions, but stood gravely looking at his wife.
When the door had closed behind them, Maggie stood for some minutes by the window looking out over the snow-clad plain, the rugged, broken rocks beneath her.
Then she turned to the writing-table. She resolutely took pen and paper, but the least thing seemed to distract her attention—the coronet on the note-paper cost her five minutes of far-off reflection. She took up the pen again, and wrote “Dear Mother.”
The room grew darker. Maggie looked up. The snow had begun again. It was driving past the window with a silent, purposeful monotony. The girl drew the writing-case toward her. She examined the pen critically and dipped it into the ink. But she added nothing to the two words already written.
The castle of Osterno is almost unique in the particular that one roof covers the ancient and the modern buildings. The vast reception-rooms, worthy of the name of state-rooms, adjoin the small stone-built apartments of the fortress which Paul’s ancestors held against the Tartars. This grimmer side of the building Paul reserved to the last for reasons of his own, and Etta’s manifest delight in the grandeur of the more modern apartments fully rewarded him. Here, again, that side of her character manifested itself which has already been shown. She was dazzled and exhilarated by the splendor of it all, and the immediate effect was a feeling of affection toward the man to whom this belonged; who was in act, if not in word, laying it at her feet.
When they passed from the lofty rooms to the dimmer passages of the old castle Etta’s spirits visibly dropped, her interest slackened. He told her of tragedies enacted in by-gone times—such ancient tales of violent death and broken hearts as attach themselves to gray stone walls and dungeon keeps. She only half listened, for her mind was busy with the splendors they had left behind, with the purposes to which such splendors could be turned. And the sum total of her thoughts was gratified vanity.
Her bright presence awakened the gloom of ages within the dimly lit historic rooms. Her laugh sounded strangely light and frivolous and shallow in the silence of the ages which had brooded within these walls since the days of Tamerlane. It was perhaps the greatest tragedy of the Alexis family, this beautiful tragedy that walked by the side of Paul.
“I am glad your grandfather brought French architects here and built the modern side,” she said. “These rooms are, of course, very interesting, but gloomy—horribly gloomy, Paul. There is a smell of ghosts and dulness.”
“All the same, I like these rooms,” answered Paul. “Steinmetz and I used to live entirely on this side of the house. This is the smoking-room. We shot those bears, and all the deer. That is a wolf’s head. He killed a keeper before I finished him off.”
Etta looked at her husband with a curious little smile. She sometimes felt proud of him, despite the ever present knowledge that, intellectually speaking, she was his superior. There was something strong and simple and manly in a sort of mediaeval way that pleased her in this big husband of hers.
“And how did you finish him off?” she asked.
“I choked him. That bear knocked me down, but Steinmetz shot him. We were four days out in the open after that elk. This is a lynx—a queer face—rather like De Chauxville; the dogs killed him.”
“But why do you not paper the room,” asked Etta, with a shiver, “instead of this gloomy panelling? It is so mysterious and creepy. Quite suggestive of secret passages.”
“There are no secret passages,” answered Paul. “But there is a room behind here. This is the door. I will show it to you presently. I have things in there I want to show you. I keep all my medicines and appliances in there. It is our secret surgery and office. In that room the Charity League was organized.”
Etta turned away suddenly and went to the narrow window, where she sat on a low window-seat, looking down into the snow-clad depths.
“I did not know you were a doctor,” she said.
“I doctor the peasants,” replied Paul, “in a rough-and-ready way. I took my degree on purpose. But, of course, they do not know that it is I; they think I am a doctor from Moscow. I put on an old coat, and wear a scarf, so that they cannot see my face. I only go to them at night. It would never do for the Government to know that we attempt to do good to the peasants. We have to keep it a secret even from the people themselves. And they hate us. They groan and hoot when we drive through the village. But they never attempt to do us any harm; they are too much afraid of us.”
When Etta rose and came toward him her face was colorless.
“Let me see this room,” she said.
He opened the door and followed her into the apartment, which has already been described. Here he told further somewhat bald details of the work he had attempted to do. It is to be feared that he made neither an interesting nor a romantic story of it. There were too many details—too much statistic, and no thrilling realism whatever. The experiences of a youthful curate in Bethnal Green would have made high tragedy beside the tale that this man told his wife of the land upon which God has assuredly laid His curse—Aceldama, the field of blood.
Etta listened, and despite herself she became interested. She was sitting in a chair usually occupied by Steinmetz. There was a faint aroma of tobacco-smoke. The atmosphere of the room was manly and energetic.
Paul showed her his simple stores of medicine—the old coat saturated with disinfectants which had become the recognized outward sign of the Moscow doctor.
“And do other people, other noblemen, try to do this sort of thing too?” asked Etta at length.
“Catrina Lanovitch does,” replied Paul.
“What? The girl with the hair?”
“Yes,” answered Paul. He had never noticed Catrina’s hair. Etta’s appraising eye had seen more in one second than Paul had perceived in twenty years.
“Yes,” he answered. “But, of course, she is handicapped.”
“By her appearance?”
“No; by her circumstances. Her name is sufficient to handicap her every moment in this country. But she does a great deal. She—she found me out, confound her!”
Etta had risen; she was looking curiously at the cupboard where Paul’s infected clothes were hanging. He had forbidden her to go near it. She turned and looked at him.
“Found you out! How?” she asked, with a queer smile.
“Saw through my disguise.”
“Yes—she would do that!” said Etta aloud to herself.
“What is this door?” she asked, after a pause.
“It leads to an inner room,” replied Paul, “where Steinmetz usually works.”
He passed in front of her and opened the door. As he was doing so Etta went on in the train of her thoughts:
“So Catrina knows?”
“Yes.”
“And no one else?”
Paul made no answer; for he had passed on into the smaller room, where Steinmetz was seated at a writing-table.
“Except, of course, Herr Steinmetz?” Etta went on interrogatively.
“Madame,” said the German, looking up with his pleasant smile, “I knowevery thing.”
And he went on writing.
The table d’htte of the Httel de Moscou at Tver had just begun. The soup had been removed; the diners were engaged in igniting their first cigarette at the candles placed between each pair of them for that purpose. By nature the modern Russian is a dignified and somewhat reserved gentleman. By circumstance he has been schooled into a state of guarded unsociability. If there is a seat at a public table conveniently removed from those occupied by earlier arrivals the new-comer invariably takes it. In Russia one converses—as in Scotland one jokes—with difficulty.
A Russian table d’htte is therefore any thing but hilarious in its tendency. A certain number of grave-faced gentlemen and a few broad-jowled ladies are visibly constrained by the force of circumstance to dine at the same table and hour, et voil` tout. There is no pretence that any more sociable and neighborly motive has brought them together. Indeed, they each suspect the other of being a German, or a Nihilist, or, worse still, a Government servant. They therefore sit as far apart as possible, and smoke cigarettes between and during the courses with that self-centred absorption which would be rude, if it were not entirely satisfactory, to the average Briton. The ladies, of course, have the same easy method of showing a desire for silence and reflection in a country where nurses carrying infants usually smoke in the streets, and where a dainty confectioner’s assistant places her cigarette between her lips in order to leave her hands free for the service of her customers.
The table d’htte of the Httel de Moscou at Tver was no exception to the general rule. In Russia, by the way, there are no exceptions to general rules. The personal habits of the native of Cronstadt differ in no way from those of the Czar’s subject living in Petropavlovsk, eight thousand miles away.
Around the long table of the host were seated, at respectable intervals, a dozen or more gentlemen, who gazed stolidly at each other from time to time, while the host himself smiled broadly upon them all from that end of the room where the lift and the smell of cooking exercise their calling—the one to spoil the appetite, the other to pander to it when spoilt.
Of these dozen gentlemen we have only to deal with one—a man of broad, high forehead, of colorless eyes, of a mask-like face, who consumed what was put before him with as little noise as possible. Known in Paris as “Ce bon Vassili,” this traveller. But in Paris one does not always use the word bon in its English sense of “good.”
M. Vassili was evidently desirous of attracting as little attention as circumstances would allow. He was obviously doing his best to look like one who travelled in the interest of braid or buttons. Moreover, when Claude de Chauxville entered the table d’htte room, he concealed whatever surprise he may have felt behind a cloud of cigarette smoke. Through the same blue haze he met the Frenchman’s eye, a moment later, without the faintest twinkle of recognition.
These two worthies went through the weird courses provided by a cook professing a knowledge of Frenchcuisinewithout taking any compromising notice of each other. When the meal was over Vassili inscribed the number of his bedroom in large figures on the label of his bottle of St. Emilion—after the manner of wise commercial-travellers in continental hotels. He subsequently turned the bottle round so that Claude de Chauxville could scarcely fail to read the number, and with a vague and general bow he left the room.
In his apartment the genial Vassili threw more wood into the stove, drew forward the two regulation arm-chairs, and lighted all the candles provided. He then rang the bell and ordered liqueurs. There was evidently something in the nature of an entertainment about to take place in apartment No. 44 of the Httel de Moscou.
Before long a discreet knock announced the arrival of the expected visitor.
“Entrez!” cried Vassili; and De Chauxville stood before him, with a smile which in French is called crbne.
“A pleasure,” said Vassili, behind his wooden face, “that I did not anticipate in Tver.”
“And consequently one that carries its own mitigation. An unanticipated pleasure, mon ami, is always inopportune. I make no doubt that you were sorry to see me.”
“On the contrary. Will you sit?”
“I can hardly believe,” went on De Chauxville, taking the proffered chair, “that my appearance was opportune—on the principle, ha! ha! that a flower growing out of place is a weed. Gentlemen of the—eh—Home Office prefer, I know, to travel quietly!” He spread out his expressive hands as if smoothing the path of M. Vassili through this stony world. “Incognito,” he added guilelessly.
“One does not publish one’s name from the housetops,” replied the Russian, with a glimmer of pride in his eyes, “especially if it happen to be not quite obscure; but between friends, my dear baron—between friends.”
“Yes. Then what are you doing in Tver?” enquired De Chauxville, with engaging frankness.
“Ah, that is a long story. But I will tell you—never fear—I will tell you on the usual terms.”
“Viz?” enquired the Frenchman, lighting a cigarette.
Vassili accepted the match with a bow, and did likewise. He blew a guileless cloud of smoke toward the dingy ceiling.
“Exchange, my dear baron, exchange.”
“Oh, certainly,” replied De Chauxville, who knew that Vassili was in all probability fully informed as to his movements past and prospective. “I am going to visit some old friends in this Government—the Lanovitches, at Thors.”
“Ah!”
“You know them?”
Vassili raised his shoulders and made a little gesture with his cigarette, as much as to say, “Why ask?”
De Chauxville looked at his companion keenly. He was wondering whether this man knew that he—Claude de Chauxville—loved Etta Howard Alexis, and consequently hated her husband. He was wondering how much or how little this impenetrable individual knew and suspected.
“I have always said,” observed Vassili suddenly, “that for unmitigated impertinence give me a diplomatist.”
“Ah! And what would you desire that I should, for the same commodity, give you now?”
“A woman.”
There was a short silence in the room while these two birds of a feather reflected.
Suddenly Vassili tapped himself on the chest with his forefinger.
“It was I,” he said, “who crushed that very dangerous movement—the Charity League.”
“I know it.”
“A movement, my dear baron, to educate the moujik, if you please. To feed him and clothe him, and teach him—to be discontented with his lot. To raise him up and make a man of him. Pah! He is a beast. Let him be treated as such. Let him work. If he will not work, let him starve and die.”
“The man who cannot contribute toward the support of those above him in life is superfluous,” said De Chauxville glibly.
“Precisely. Now, my dear baron, listen to me!” The genial Vassili leaned forward and tapped with one finger on the knee of De Chauxville, as if knocking at the door of his attention.
“I am all ears, mon bon monsieur,” replied the Frenchman, rather coldly. He had just been reflecting that, after all, he did not want any favor from Vassili for the moment, and the manner of the latter was verging on the familiar.
“The woman—who—sold—me—the Charity League papers dined at my house in Paris—a fortnight ago,” said Vassili, with a staccato tap on his companion’s knee by way of emphasis to each word.
“Then, my friend, I cannot—congratulate—you—on the society—in—which you move,” replied De Chauxville, mimicking his manner.
“Bah! She was a princess!”
“A princess?”
“Yes, of your acquaintance, M. le Baron! And she came to my house with her—eh—husband—the Prince Paul Howard Alexis.”
This was news indeed. De Chauxville leaned back and passed his slim white hand across his brow with a slow pressure, as if wiping some writing from a slate—as if his forehead bore the writing of his thoughts and he was wiping it away. And the thoughts he thus concealed—who can count them? For thoughts are the quickest and the longest and the saddest things of this life. The first thought was that if he had known this three months earlier he could have made Etta marry him. And that thought had a thousand branches. With Etta for his wife he might have been a different man. One can never tell what the effect of an acquired desire may be. One can only judge by analogy, and it would seem that it is a frustrated desire that makes the majority of villains.
But the news coming, thus too late, only served an evil purpose. For in that flash of thought Claude de Chauxville saw Paul’s secrets given to him; Paul’s wealth meted out to him; Paul in exile; Paul dead in Siberia, where death comes easily; Paul’s widow Claude de Chauxville’s wife. He wiped all the thoughts away, and showed to Vassili a face that was as composed and impertinent as usual.
“You said ‘her—eh—husband,’” he observed. “Why? Why did you add that little ‘eh,’ my friend?”
Vassili rose and walked to the door that led through into his bedroom from the salon in which they were sitting. It was possible to enter the bedroom from another door and overhear any conversation that might be passing in the sitting-room. The investigation was apparently satisfactory, for the Russian came back. But he did not sit down. Instead, he stood leaning against the tall china stove.
“Needless to tell you,” he observed, “the antecedents of the—princess.”
“Quite needless.”
“Married seven years ago to Charles Sydney Bamborough,” promptly giving the unnecessary information which was not wanted.
De Chauxville nodded.
“Where is Sydney Bamborough?” asked Vassili, with his mask-like smile.
“Dead,” replied the other quietly.
“Prove it.”
De Chauxville looked up sharply. The cigarette dropped from his fingers to the floor. His face was yellow and drawn, with a singular tremble of the lips, which were twisted to one side.
“Good God!” he whispered hoarsely.
There was only one thought in his mind—a sudden wild desire to rise up and stand by Etta against the whole world. Verily we cannot tell what love may make of us, whither it may lead us. We only know that it never leaves us as it found us.
Then, leaning quietly against the stove, Vassili stated his case.
“Rather more than a year ago,” he said, “I received an offer of the papers connected with a great scheme in this country. After certain enquiries had been made I accepted the offer. I paid a fabulous price for the papers. They were brought to me by a lady wearing a thick veil—a lady I had never seen before. I asked no questions, and paid her the money. It subsequently transpired that the papers had been stolen, as you perhaps know, from the house of Count Stipan Lanovitch—the house to which you happen to be going—at Thors. Well, that is all ancient history. It is to be supposed that the papers were stolen by Sydney Bamborough, who brought them here—probably to this hotel, where his wife was staying. He handed her the papers, and she conveyed them to me in Paris. But before she reached Petersburg they would have been missed by Stipan Lanovitch, who would naturally suspect the man who had been staying in his house, Bamborough—a man with a doubtful reputation in the diplomatic world, a professed doer of dirty jobs. Foreseeing this, and knowing that the League was a big thing, with a few violent members on its books, Sydney Bamborough did not attempt to leave Russia by the western route. He probably decided to go through Nijni, down the Volga, across the Caspian, and so on to Persia and India. You follow me?”
“Perfectly!” answered De Chauxville coldly.
“I have been here a week,” went on the Russian spy, “making enquiries. I have worked the whole affair out, link by link, till the evening when the husband and wife parted. She went west with the papers. Where did he go?”
De Chauxville picked up the cigarette, looked at it curiously, as at a relic—the relic of the moment of strongest emotion through which he had ever passed—and threw it into the ash-tray. He did not speak, and after a moment Vassili went on, stating his case with lawyer-like clearness.
“A body was found on the steppe,” he said; “the body of a middle-aged man dressed as a small commercial traveller would dress. He had a little money in his pocket, but nothing to identify him. He was buried here in Tver by the police, who received their information by an anonymous post-card posted in Tver. The person who had found the body did not want to be implicated in any enquiry. Now, who found the body? Who was the dead man? Mrs. Sydney Bamborough has assumed that the dead man was her husband; on the strength of that assumption she has become a princess. A frail foundation upon which to build up her fortunes, eh?”
“How did she know that the body had been found?” asked De Chauxville, perceiving the weak point in his companion’s chain of argument.
“It was reported shortly in the local newspapers,” replied Vassili, “and repeated in one or two continental journals, as the police were of opinion that the man was a foreigner. Any one watching the newspapers would see it—otherwise the incident might pass unobserved.”
“And you think,” said De Chauxville, suppressing his excitement with an effort, “that the lady has risked every thing upon a supposition?”
“Knowing the lady, I do.”
De Chauxville’s dull eyes gleamed for a moment with an unwonted light. All the civilization of the ages will not eradicate the primary instincts of men—and one of these, in good and bad alike, is to protect women. The Frenchman bit the end of his cigarette, and angrily wiped the tobacco from his lips.
“She may have information of which you are ignorant,” he suggested.
“Precisely. It is that particular point which gives me trouble at the present moment. It is that that I wish to discover.”
De Chauxville looked up coolly. He saw his advantage.
“Hence your sudden flow of communicativeness?” he said.
Vassili nodded.
“You cannot find out for yourself, so you seek my help?” went on the Frenchman.
Again the Russian nodded his head.
“And your price?” said De Chauxville, drawing in his feet and leaning forward, apparently to study the pattern of the carpet. The action concealed his face. He was saving Etta, and he was ashamed of himself.
“When you have the information you may name your own price,” said the Russian coldly.
There was a long silence. Before speaking De Chauxville turned and took a glass of liqueur from the table. His hand was not quite steady. He raised the glass quickly and emptied it. Then he rose and looked at his watch. The silence was a compact.
“When the lady dined with you in Paris, did she recognize you?” he asked.
“Yes; but she did not know that I recognized her.”
For the moment they both overlooked Steinmetz.
De Chauxville stood reflecting.
“And your theory,” he said, “respecting Sydney Bamborough—what is it?”
“If he got away to Nijni and the Volga, it is probable that he is in Eastern Siberia or in Persia at this moment. He has not had time to get right across Asia yet.”
De Chauxville moved toward the door. With his fingers on the handle he paused again.
“I leave early to-morrow morning,” he said.
Vassili nodded, or rather he bowed, in his grand way.
Then De Chauxville went out of the room. They did not shake hands. There is sometimes shame among thieves.