THE SHEARS OF DESTINY
THE SHEARS OF DESTINY
THE SHEARS OF DESTINYCHAPTER ITHE WOMAN IN BROWN
THE SHEARS OF DESTINY
INSTEAD of the week Drexel had thought his business would keep him in Moscow, two days sufficed. They were a pleasant two days, rich with promise of future profit, and it was with regret that he settled down in his compartment of the day express to St. Petersburg. He would have been glad had his business denied him a little longer the company of his aunt and his cousin Alice and the polished Prince Berloff.
Drexel gave little heed to the country through which his train shrieked and rumbled. And there was small reason that he should, for the land was monotonously flat, and made more monotonous by its vast blanket of sunless snow, beneath which it had been asleep these two months and which it would not throw aside with the awakening gesture of Spring for three long months to come. As far as the eye could reach there was only this gray-white, frozen desert—desolate emptiness, save where forests of spruce and hemlock lifted their myriad whited peaks toward the sullen sky, or adistant peasant village huddled low as if shivering with the bitter cold.
The pictures before his inward eye were far more interesting than this unvaried panorama unrolled by the snowbound land of his exile. He had reserved an entire compartment that he might think uninterrupted, and as the white miles flew behind him new visions of fortune, of power, of position, shaped and reshaped themselves in his rapid incisive mind. He longed impatiently to be back in Chicago—back with his uncle in the midst of things!
Running through all his thoughts and visions was his last talk with his uncle. That talk had risen from this very business of his coming to Russia. While in Paris the preceding summer Alice and her mother had met Prince Berloff, then in France on a secret diplomatic mission. He was one of Russia’s greatest titles, Alice one of America’s greatest fortunes, so the engagement that followed was possibly pre-ordained. Alice’s mother had written her husband that she desired to see the country where her daughter was to be so exalted a figure, and had declared that they would be perfectly safe, even though smouldering revolutions did threaten to flame forth, under the protection of so great a nobleman as Prince Berloff. But old John Howard would not permit their visit without a nearer escort; and since he himself could not leave the great traction deal which then engrossed him, he had shunted his duties upon his convenient nephew.
Drexel had rebelled. He protested against leaving the traction deal and the other vast interests his uncle was drawing him into. And on another ground he protested with even greater vehemence. He had thought himself in love with his pretty cousin, and he now urged to his uncle the ironic incongruity of the rejected suitor being compelled to escort his inamorata about the land, and among the honours, of his successful rival.
His uncle had put a hand upon his arm. “See here, Henry,” he said with brusque affection, “you don’t really care for Alice, and never did care. You just thought you did.”
“We’ll pass that. But even if I cared, you would have turned me down just the same.” His tone was bitter, for the thing still rankled. “Of course I realize that your sister’s son is a poor man.”
“No poorer than my son would be, if I had one, if I had died twenty-five years ago like your father. In this marriage business, it wasn’t that you haven’t any money. It was because your aunt—well, you know as well as I do how keen she was about a title. But forget all that, my lad. I like you just as if you were my own boy. And I’m proud of you. Ten years from now, you’ll be the biggest young business man in America!”
Drexel gave a dry laugh. “I don’t look much like that picture at present. What have I got? Only the little my mother left me!”
And then his uncle had said the great words.“Eh, but, boy, you’re only twenty-six; and so far you’ve just been in training! In training to take my place when I step out. Your training is over; when you come back from Russia, your real career begins—and a big one, too! Oh, your fifty thousand is nothing”—he brushed it aside with a contemptuous hand—“but you know you’re coming in for a good part of what I have and you’re going to manage the whole pile. One of these princes may be all right for a son-in-law, but he don’t get control of my business! The things I’ve spent my life in building up, I’m not going to have sold, or ruined by mismanagement. No, sir!”
The old man had brought the flat of his hand down upon the table. “See here, Henry—forget your grouch—look me straight in the eye. That’s right. Now, down in the bottom of your heart, don’t you know that you’ve got the biggest business chance of any young fellow in America?”
The keen young gray eyes looked steadily into the keen old gray eyes. “I do,” he admitted.
“And is there anything you’d like better than to control great industries—to make millions on millions—to know that though you don’t live in Washington you’ve got as big a say-so in running things as any man that does?”
The young man’s face had glowed, his voice had rung with perfect confidence. “I’m going to be all that, uncle. I feel it in me! It’s the dream of my life!”
And it was about this great future that Drexel’s thoughts revolved as his train roared onward across the snow. His ironic duty was all but done. For three months he had grimly played his part, and now in two weeks Alice would be Princess Berloff. Originally the marriage was to have taken place in Chicago, but the disturbed state of affairs would not permit the prince to leave his country, so it had been decided that the wedding should be in St. Petersburg—and Mr. Howard, set free by a business lull, was now lunging through wintry seas to be present at the ceremony. Two more weeks, and Drexel and his uncle would be speeding back to Chicago—back to giant affairs.
But some of his business thoughts centred here in Russia; for, after all, his banishment from business promised to be a fortunate misfortune. Drexel had not been in Russia two days before he had seen the tremendous opportunities the future would offer capital in this the most undeveloped of civilized countries. He had begun to project great schemes—schemes to be inaugurated years hence, when the success of the Czar or the revolutionists had given the country that stability necessary for business enterprise. And it was characteristic of his energy, and of the way he prepared for distant eventualities, that he had applied himself to the study of the Russian tongue the better to fit himself for these dim-seen Russian successes.
At Bolgoîé his meditations were interrupted bythe pause of the express for lunch. The platform was crowded with soldiers and gendarmes, and standing about in attitudes of exaggerated indifference were men whose furtive watchfulness betrayed them as spies of an inferior grade. At Drexel’s table in the station dining-room sat several officers of the gendarmerie, to whom he mechanically listened. They were discussing the greatest of the Government’s recent triumphs—the arrest a week before of Borodin, one of the chief revolutionary leaders, who immediately following his seizure had been secretly whisked away, no one knew whither save only the head of the spy system and a few other high officials. In what prison the great leader was held was a question all Russia was then asking.
“Ah,” exclaimed the officers, “if the same prison only held The White One!”
That was a name to arouse even such indifferent ears as Drexel’s, for he felt the same curiosity as did the rest of Russia concerning the person concealed behind this famous sobriquet. The little that he knew had served only to quicken his interest. He joined in the officers’ conversation, but they could add nothing to his meagre knowledge. The White One was the great general who planned and directed the outbursts from the underworld of revolution—a master of daring strategy—the shrewdest, keenest brain in the Empire. That was all. For the rest The White One was shrouded incomplete mystery. To Russia at large The White One was just a great, invisible, impersonal power, and to the Czar the name most dreaded in all his realm.
Back in his compartment, Drexel renewed his eager planning, and his mind did not again turn from business till St. Petersburg was but some two hours ahead, and the short, dull-hued day had long since deepened into night. He heard a voice in the corridor of his coach remark that near the station at which the train had just paused was the great estate of Prince Berloff. He peered through the double-glazed window out of casual interest in the place he knew from several visits. But he could see nothing but a long shed of a station building and a few shaggy peasants in sheepskin coats, so as the train started up he settled back and his brain returned to its schemes.
A few moments later he became aware that the portière at the door of his compartment had been drawn aside. Irritated that anyone should intrude upon the privacy he had paid high to secure himself, he looked up. In the doorway stood a young woman, twenty-two or three perhaps, slender but not too slender, with hair of the colour of midnight, long black eyelashes and a smooth dark skin faintly flushed with the cold. The eyes were of that deep clear blue that is sometimes given a brunette. She wore a long loose fur coat of a rich dark brown, and a cap of the same dark fur, and shecarried a brown muff, and over her wrist a leather bag.
For only an instant did she pause, with the portière in one hand. Then without a word to Drexel, who had half risen, she entered the compartment and took the opposite seat.