CHAPTER IICAUGHT IN THE CURRENT
WITH her chin in one slender, exquisitely gloved hand, she stared out into the flying darkness. As for Drexel, not another thought went to America or to fortune-building. The moment he had seen that darkly beautiful figure a thrill had gone through him and a dizzying something that choked him had risen into his throat.
Her fixed gaze into the outward blackness gave him his chance and he was not the man to squander it. He eyed her steadily, noticed that she breathed quickly, as though she had hurried for the train—noticed how white and even were the teeth between her barely parted lips—noticed again how smooth was the texture of her skin and how like rich old marble was its colour—noticed how finely chiselled were all her features, how small the ear that nestled up in her dark hair. He wondered who she was, and what. But who, or what, she was decidedly a Russian, and decidedly the most beautiful woman he had seen in all the Czar’s wide realm.
Once he gazed out the window, with the purpose that he might look back upon her with the freshnessof a first glance. When he turned, it was to give a start. She was gazing straight at him. And her eyes did not fall or turn when met by his. She continued to gaze straight into his face, with those black-lashed blue eyes of hers, such a blue as he had never before seen—with no overture in her look, no invitation, no whit of coquetry—continued peering, peering, as though studying the very fibre of his soul.
What her outward eye saw was a figure of lithe strength, built as the man should be built who had been his university’s greatest tackle, and a dark-mustached, square-chinned, steady-eyed face that bespoke power and one used to recognition and authority.
Drexel met her gaze with held breath, in suspense as to what remarkable event this remarkable look would the next minute lead to. But it led to none. She merely turned her eyes back into the darkness.
He noticed now that she seemed a little tense, as though mastering some emotion. But other things claimed his thoughts above this. He wanted to speak to her—wondered if he dared; but, despite that long direct look, despite her walking into his private compartment, he knew she was not the woman with whom one could pick up acquaintance on a train. He saw what was going to happen; they would ride on thus to St. Petersburg—part without a word—never see each other again.
The train sped on. At length they neared theenvirons of the capital. They stopped at a station where lay a train from St. Petersburg, then started up again. It seemed to Drexel that her tensity was deepening.
“Pardon,” suddenly said a voice at the door.
Both Drexel and the girl looked about. There stood a big-bodied, bearded man in the long gray coat of a captain of gendarmes.
“What is it?” Drexel curtly demanded in his broken Russian. The young woman said nothing.
The captain entered. He had the deference which the political police show the well-dressed and the obviously well-born, but can never spare the poor.
“Excuse me,” said he, “I must examine madame.”
The young woman paled, but her voice rang with indignation. “What do you mean?”
It was a distinct surprise to Drexel that her Russian was also broken—but little better than his own.
“It is my duty, madame,” returned the officer. “I am sorry, but I must discharge my duty.”
She rose in her superb beauty and flashed a look at the captain that made Drexel’s heart leap, so much of fire and spirit did it reveal.
“Duty or no duty, I shall accept no indignity at your hands!” she cried.
The officer hesitated. “My orders are my orders, as madame must know. What I do here I must do through all the train; no woman can leave till she has been examined. But I shall go no fartherthan necessary. Perhaps madame’s passport will be sufficient. That, madame knows, she must always show upon request.”
The young woman’s indignation subsided, and she sat down and reached for her leather bag. Drexel had been in Russia long enough to know this searching of a train meant that something had happened. And he knew how formidable was this officer—not in himself, but in what he represented, what was massed behind him: a quarter of a million of political police and spies, hundreds of prisons, Siberian exile, the scaffold, blindfolded death from rifle volleys.
Both Drexel and the captain closely watched the young woman. She went through the notes and few articles for the toilet in the little bag; and then a look of annoyance came over her face. Drexel’s heart beat high. He knew what faced the person who had no passport.
She went through the little bag again—and again found nothing.
The captain’s eyes had grown suspicious. “Well, your passport, madame!” he cried roughly. “Or you come with me!”
Drexel knew she was in danger, and in a flash he thought of a dozen wild things that he might do to aid her. But he thought of nothing so wild as what next occurred.
She looked up from her bag and turned those wonderful eyes straight into his face—and smiled! Theintimate, domestic, worried smile that a wife might give her husband.
“John, dear,” she said in purest English, “that bothersome passport must have been packed in among your things.”
Henry Drexel may have been unconscious for some portion of an instant. But the captain, who had turned to him, saw never a blink, never a falter.
“Why, perhaps it was, Mary,” said he, and he reached for his bag.
The world whizzed about him as he went through the form of searching his suit-case; but he showed only a perplexed, annoyed face when he looked up.
“We must have left it out altogether, Mary,” he said, speaking in Russian for the sake of the captain.
“How provoking!” cried she, likewise in Russian.
But this play-acting, good though it was, was not enough to counterbalance “orders.” “I’ve got nothing to do with forgotten passports,” said the captain. He seized her arm. “You’ll have to come with me!”
She gave Drexel a quick look. But he did not need it. Already he was on his feet.
“Don’t you dare touch my wife!” he cried, and he furiously flung the captain’s hand away.
The captain glared. “I’ll do what—”
“You won’t!” snapped Drexel. He pressed his chest squarely against that of the officer. “You dare touch my wife—the wife of an Americancitizen—and see what happens to you when I make my complaint! It will be the worst mistake of your life! As for this passport business, as soon as we get to Petersburg I shall fix it up with the chief of police.” He pointed at the door. “Now—you leave us!”
The captain looked at the broad-shouldered young fellow, with the determined face and the flashing eyes. Looked and hesitated, for Drexel’s dominant bearing was not only the bearing of wrathful innocence, but it was eloquent of power to carry out his threat.
The captain wavered, then broke. “I hope monsieur will excuse——”
“Good-bye!” said Drexel sharply.
The captain bowed and stumbled out. When Drexel turned the young woman was breathing rapidly and her face spoke many sensations—relief, excitement, gratitude, perhaps a glint of admiration.
She gave him that direct gaze of hers and held out her hand. “Thank you—very much,” she said simply, in English.
“I’m afraid I was rather melodramatic,” returned Drexel, somewhat lamely.
“You could not have done it better. Thank you.”
That bothersome passport must have been packed among your things“John, dear,” she said in purest English, “that bothersome passport must have been packed among your things”
“John, dear,” she said in purest English, “that bothersome passport must have been packed among your things”
“John, dear,” she said in purest English, “that bothersome passport must have been packed among your things”
They sat down and for a moment looked at each other in silence. Her breath still came sharply. He was eager to know the meaning of all this; he was sure she would explain; but he said nothing,leaving it to her to speak or keep silent, as she would.
She saw his curiosity. “You are surprised?”
“I confess it.”
“I am sorry so poorly to reward what you have done. But I cannot explain.”
He inclined his head. “As you please.”
“Thank you,” she said again.
If Drexel had thought this incident was to establish them at once in close acquaintance, that hope soon began to suffer disappointment. There was no lack of courtesy, of gratitude, in her manner; he was already so far in her confidence that she dropped her mask of perfect control, and let him see that she was palpitantly alert and fearful; but she spoke to him no more than a bare monosyllable or two. Her fear spread to him. Mixed with his wonderment as to who she was, and what was this mysterious danger that menaced her, was a trembling apprehension lest the captain, recovered from his intimidation, should reappear in the compartment.
But the captain did not reappear, and they rode on in their strange, strained silence. When the train drew into the Nicholayevsky Station in St. Petersburg, Drexel started to help her from the coach. She tried to check him, but he had her out upon the platform before she could say a word.
She quickly held out her hand. “Good-bye,” she said hurriedly.
“Good-bye?” he cried in dismay.
“Yes. We shall not meet again.”
An icy chill swept through him. “Not meet again! Why, I had hoped that you would let me come—”
“You cannot come,” she went on swiftly. “And you must not try to follow me.”
That was the plan that had instantly shot into his head. “But—” he pleaded.
“You must not!”
He hesitated.
A look from those blue eyes, straight into his own. “You will not. I trust you.”
He bowed his head. “I shall not.”
“Good-bye—and thank you,” said she.
He gripped her hand. “Good-bye,” he said. And he gathered in his last look of her.
But suddenly, when he thought he had lost her, her hand slipped through his arm—slipped through it as with wifely habit—and she was saying to him in a hurried whisper:
“Don’t look back. That gendarme captain is working this way. I think he’s not wholly satisfied. I must at least leave with you. Come.”
Again Drexel did not blink. Instantly he was leading her along the platform, arm in arm, with the easy manner of four or five married years. In the open square before the station scores of bearded drivers, swathed in blankets till they looked like bulky mummies, were clamorously shouting, “Isvochtchik! Isvochtchik!” One of these Drexelsignalled. He was helping her into the little sleigh when he saw her give a calm, steady look to some one behind him. Turning, he saw the captain, for whom a sleigh was drawing up to the curb. Drexel gave him a curt nod, stepped into the foot-high sleigh and drew the fur robe about them. The driver cracked his whip and the horse sprang away.
“After a few blocks you can set me down,” she whispered.
For even that respite Drexel was grateful.
“Where shall I take my lord?” came over the driver’s shoulder.
“Up Nevsky Prospect,” Drexel ordered.
They turned into bright-lit Nevsky Prospect, thronged with flashing sleighs, and glided without speech over the polished snow. After a few moments she glanced back. She clutched his arm.
“He is behind us!”
He did not need to be told not to turn his head. “The captain?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think he is following us?”
“Perhaps he is only taking the same direction by chance. Let us stop a few times. That will show us.”
Drexel gave the necessary orders. They made a stop at a fruit store, another at a confectioner’s—but when she looked back, there, at a distance, was the captain jogging in their tracks.
“He is following—that’s certain!” she breathed.
“He is suspicious, but hesitates to do anything, and thinks it wisest to watch us. Apparently there is no shaking him.”
Suddenly a new idea rushed into Drexel’s head. He looked down into her face; he tried to speak steadily—tried to keep his joy out of his voice.
“Do you remember what we told that officer—that we were husband and wife?”
“Yes.”
“Till we can get rid of him, our only safety is in keeping up that pretence. If we make one suspicious move he will pounce upon us. You and I, we must stay together.”
She was silent.
“Don’t you see that?” he asked.
“Yes. But the danger to you?”
“That? That is nothing!” he cried. “Will you come with me?”
She looked steadily at him a moment.
“I will come,” she said.
For an instant he considered at what hotel there was least danger of his being recognized. “Isvochtchik, to the Hotel Metropole—straight!” he ordered.
Ten minutes later they were standing in the hotel lobby, her arm in his, two porters industriously brushing the snow off their long fur coats, and a gold-braided major-domo before them.
“I suppose,” said Drexel, “you have a room for myself and wife?”
“Certainly, sir,” said the bowing major-domo.
“Ah—say two rooms, with a connecting door?”
“Certainly. I will show you.”
Drexel followed, and the young woman, with perfect poise, with a grace that made him marvel, swept up the stairway at his side. The two rooms were large, each with a great white-tiled stove filling one corner from floor to ceiling, with long windows looking out upon the street—and with, between the two, the required door.
Were the rooms satisfactory? Entirely so. Would madame or monsieur desire anything for their comfort? If they did they would order it later.
When the major-domo and the porter who had brought up Drexel’s suit-case were gone, and Drexel was left standing alone in the larger room with that brilliantly beautiful creature, he was swept with a desire that this marriage game they played—a game involving life and death, and far, far more, for aught he knew—were not a game at all, but a reality.
But he mastered himself. It was only a game—and he had to see the game through to the end.
“This room will be yours,” said he.
“Very well,” said she.
He stepped to the connecting door and changed the key to her side of the lock. She thanked him with a look.
“Perhaps you would like something to eat?” he suggested.
“Nothing.”
He wanted to remain and talk with her, yet the situation was such that the suggestion had to come from her. He hesitated near the door, waiting—but the invitation did not come.
“I shall put out my light,” he said, “but I shall not go to bed. If you need me, just call. Good-night.”
Suddenly she came across the room to him, her hand outstretched, her dark face glowing.
“Forgive me if I seem unthankful,” she said in her rich low voice. “I am not. And forgive me because I can say so little. Perhaps the time will come when I can tell you all, and thank you as you deserve. But please understand that I understand, and that I appreciate, what you have done for me, and the danger you are now incurring in being here.”
As he looked into her glowing eyes, his words burst out of their own accord. “I would rather be here than any place else in the world!”
She flushed slightly under his gaze. “Good-night—” and she pressed his hand.
“Good-night,” said he.
He stepped into the other room, and the next moment the key turned in the lock.