CHAPTER IXONE WOMAN—OR TWO?
AND so this famous beauty, this proud daughter of Russia’s proudest nobility, was the unknown girl of his strange adventure, was the working-girl who had talked so passionately of liberty! Now, in this almost royal circle, she was cold and haughty and disdainful, her manner as lofty toward all beneath her as could have been the highest of French noblewomen’s in the days before the Revolution overwhelmed France with its cataclysm;—and yet, how she had flamed forth in her love of the people! How it could all be was almost too much for Drexel’s reeling brain; but that wonderful grace, those wonderful eyes, that wonderful face—Russia held not their duplicate!
Until this moment it had not occurred to him that there had been anything unworthy in his proposal of marriage. But now, swift after the first blow of astonishment, he grew hot with shame through all his body. He had, in high-born, lofty fashion offered to lift her out of her poverty and give her wealth; he whose wealth was all yet to be made, to her one of Russia’s richest heiresses. He had spoken of his birth, and had offered her positionand family; he who barely knew the name of his grandfather’s father, to her whose forebears were great nobles when the Norsemen made their storied voyage to America; whose line went back and back even to the mighty Rurick, and then disappeared into the mist of legend that hangs over all things Russian before the ninth century.
But there were too many stirring puzzles here for even shame to dominate him long. He had been with her in this same St. Petersburg in her role of working-girl but four evenings ago, yet how was it that to-day she had arrived in state from abroad? And why had she caused him to be held a prisoner? And what would be the effect on her, who thought him safe under guard, suddenly to face him?
But the questions that surged into his mind had no time to complete themselves, much less to find answers, for the princess had crossed the ball-room and was now but a few yards distant. He was certain she had not seen him, and he turned his back to avoid her for a double reason; because, in his shame he shrunk from the meeting, and because he feared seeing him there unexpectedly might deeply startle her and even be her betrayal. But a hand fell upon his arm, and a voice in French—Prince Berloff’s voice—fell upon his ears:
“Drexel, I want you to meet my cousin, Princess Valenko.”
He would have spared her this public show of her dismay if he could, but now it was beyond him.Hating himself that it fell to his part thus to be her undoing, he turned and looked her in the face.
But there was no falling back, no consternation, not so much as a start. She gave him a straight cold look, in which there was not the faintest recognition of a previous meeting.
So surprised was he by her self-command that he could only mumble his way through the introduction, and he only vaguely heard her express in composed, formal phrases her pleasure at meeting one who was in a manner to be a relative. Then the others who had surrounded her were for a moment swept away, and they two were left alone together, face to face.
The few sentences they had exchanged had been in French. “Princess, I want to apologize—yes, a thousand times,” Drexel said hurriedly in English, “for the caddish way I spoke to you four nights ago.”
Her answer was to gaze at him with a puzzled, blank expression.
“I cannot tell you how ashamed I am,” Drexel hurried on. “And I want to assure you”—this barely above a whisper and with all his earnestness—“that I shall never breathe a word of your secret.”
Still the puzzled, blank expression.
“Won’t you—after a time—forgive me? And won’t you trust me?”
Still she wore the same non-understanding look.
Suddenly a dazing idea flashed into him. “Perhapsyou do not speak English?” he asked in French.
She smiled faintly, in amused bewilderment. “Yes—a vair leetle,” she said, in anything but Sonya’s pure and fluent English. “I understand Meestair Drexel’s words. But what he means—” She shook her head. “I think you make some meestake.”
She was carried away from him before he could speak again, giving him a half-friendly nod from her imperious head. After all, had he made a mistake? After all, was it possible that she was not Sonya? Could it be that he was the witness and victim of one of those strange caprices of nature which now and again casts two unrelated persons, perhaps from the extremes of the social scale, in the same mould? Could it be that Sonya was merely the double of Princess Valenko? Or was this just an unparalleled exhibition of nerve on the princess’s part—a marvellous bit of acting?
Never was a man more mystified than Drexel. All during the ball the questions ran through his mind, and sometimes the answers were yes, and sometimes no. Once he danced with the princess, but that relieved his bewilderment not at all, for she was perfectly at her ease, smilingly remarked once or twice in her hesitating English upon his mistake, and accorded him that faintly gracious treatment such a high-born beauty might naturally bestow upon a relative of a relative-to-be.
Finally, toward two o’clock, Drexel decided he could best think the matter over in solitude, and he started home, walking for the sake of the brain-clearing fresh air. He had gone but a hundred yards or so when he became conscious that two shadowy forms were moving ahead of him, and one was lurking in the rear. The first two suddenly vanished, but the events of the last few days had made him alert for danger; his eyes went everywhere, and he held himself in tense readiness, so that when the two made a sudden rush at him from a breach in the river-wall, he quickly side-stepped, and sped along the river till he sighted a wandering sleigh. Back in the security of his room, he realized that the revolutionists were not through with him, and that he was in danger every time he left his four walls.
But he had greater matters to consider than this. During most of the night, and all the next morning, he was thinking over the many questions that beset his mind. Foremost, was or was not Sonya identical with Princess Valenko? He considered their points of similarity—weighed this against that. But at every turn he was balked by the fact that Sonya had tried to seize documents from Berloff’s house, and yet Berloff had last night treated the princess with most deferential courtesy—by the fact that only the day before she had arrived in aristocratic splendour from abroad—by her cool, smiling ignorance of him and what he talked of.
But finally, casting all bewildering pros and cons aside, he concluded that if such a high-spirited woman as the princess had been leading such a dangerous double life and had found herself in such a situation as last night’s, her behaviour would have been identical with the princess’s—she would have tried to brazen it through and make him think himself mistaken. They were one and the same, he decided; two such rare women, so similar, could not exist. And if they were the same, he could well understand why she had feared him and caused his capture. He had known her in the role of revolutionist, there was likelihood of his meeting her as Princess Valenko—and his discovery of their identicality would, as her fear viewed it, be disaster for her.
He at length shaped a plan, based on his love for her, on his desire to relieve her of her needless fear, and on the constant danger in which he stood. That afternoon he drove to the Princess Valenko’s. On the way he gave a look over his shoulder. A block behind in a sleigh he saw two men wrapped to the eyes, yet not so bundled up but that he recognized Ivan and Nicolai; and near them in another sleigh were two other men whom he instinctively felt to be their confederates.
Before his ring at the Valenko palace had been answered, he saw the two sleighs draw up across the street half a block ahead. Once admitted, he had not long to wait, but was ushered up a broadstairway into a great front drawing-room. He had hoped to find the princess alone; great, therefore, was his disappointment when he found himself with four gorgeous young officers and three women, all centring about her.
Without rising she gave him her hand, and smiled with distant, condescending friendship. “Ah—the American who is almost my relative,” she said in French; and proceeded with imperious languor to introduce him to the women and to the immaculate, gilded officers, to all of whom he bowed—though the latter he inwardly cursed as the brainless handiwork of tailors and valets.
She smiled amusedly into his face, and then about at the others. “He thinks, my almost relative”—with a little gesture toward him—“that he met me a few days ago here in St. Petersburg. And that—in what manner he has not said—he misconducted himself on that occasion. And that he shares some great secret of mine.”
Drexel fairly gasped. She had flung away her secret—and there she sat, easy, unconcerned, smiling.
“But impossible!” cried one of the officers. “The princess has been abroad since August.”
“Why it is simply absurd, monsieur,” said a stupid-looking, richly-dressed woman. “You remember, Olga—” this to the princess—“it’s only two weeks since you and I heard Tannhäuser together in Berlin. Ugh—what a wretched Elizabethshe was! And we came back yesterday from Berlin on the same train!”
“Yes,” returned the princess, smiling her slight, amused smile at Drexel. “But still I would not think of disputing the matter with Monsieur Drexel. Americans are so clever, you know.”
They all laughed at this. Drexel felt his conclusions going all to pieces, felt himself plunged again into the old uncertainty.
“Just a stupid mistake on my part, of course,” he said, rather doggedly. “I hope the princess will pardon me.”
After that the talk ran back to its subject before Drexel had entered—welcome to the princess—gossip about this person and that—chat about functions to come. Drexel was left quite out of the conversation, but this gave him time to form a determination to outstay all the others and have it out with the princess in private. This plan, however, was not so easy of achievement. The others, to be sure, took their leave in ones and pairs, but more callers came in their stead. He got a polite glance from the princess now and then, which, being interpreted, meant that he had far exceeded the limits of a call. But he sat grimly on.
At length he had his reward. But he was certain of having her to himself for no more than a moment, so the instant the last back was out of the door he drew his chair before her, leaned forward, and looked her squarely in the face.
“Princess,” said he in English, “you have the makings of the greatest poker player in the world.”
“Pokair playair!” returned she in her halting English. Her face was puzzled. “I not understand.”
“Do you know what a ‘bluffer’ is?”
“‘Bluffair’? Yes, I know. A vair American word.”
“Well, you could make the biggest bluffer in America seem a naïve child.”
“Excuse”—with a shrug. “What you mean?”
He spoke with sharp decision. “Your pretending not to know me, and all the rest, is what we would call a bluff. You are the woman I met on the railroad train six nights ago. You are the woman I talked with five nights ago. I know! There’s no use denying it!”
Her eyes did not flinch from his determined gaze; rather they took on a bored look.
“Pardon me,” said she quietly, “perhaps Meestair Drexel is one—what you call it—one bluffair?”
Drexel was not at all certain he was not just that. But his face showed none of his doubt.
“You are afraid of me because chance revealed to me your secret,” he went on. “Now I have come here to tell you that you have no reason to fear me. To tell you that you can trust me.”
She rose and looked at him haughtily. “You carry your amusement too far,” she said, lapsinginto French. “I am tired. I beg that you will excuse me.”
She started to sweep out of the room, but Drexel blocked her way.
“I have come to tell you,” he went on doggedly, “that to relieve you of any sense of danger from me, I am willing, this minute, to yield myself your prisoner, to be held as long as you desire.”
“Will you let me pass!” said she.
“As soon as you have answered me.”
Her lips curled with contempt. “Even were I what you say, even had I the wish to take you prisoner, how could I take and hold you in this house? Again you must excuse me.”
He blocked her way once more. “At least, you will cross with me to the window?”
“If you will then be so kind—”
“Yes, I will then go, princess. Come!”
He crossed the drawing-room, parted the curtains at one of the windows, and pointed down to where along the river-wall, through the falling twilight, could be seen the two sleighs.
“In those sleighs, princess,” said he, “Ivan and Nicolai—you know them—followed me here. They and two others. See that man lounging across the street; that is Ivan, waiting for me to come out. I desire that you shall have no fear of me. So I am going over there to deliver myself back into their hands. I will send a note to my people saying I have been called to Moscow on business for anindefinite time. That is all. I wish you good-afternoon.”
With that he bowed, and not waiting for a reply he strode from the room. Two minutes later he was across the street and beside one of the sleighs.
“Hello, comrades!” he cried with a reckless laugh. “Get in. I’m going with you.”
Nicolai and Ivan eyed him with silent suspicion, but they crawled in, one on either side. The sleigh was so narrow that Drexel had to sit upon their knees.
“Now, comrades,” he went on, as they were drawing the robes high about them, “as I’m going to be a guest at that hotel of yours for some time, let’s stop along the way and get a mattress that isn’t paved with cobblestones. I don’t exactly fancy— Hello! What’s that?”
A blunt object had suddenly been thrust against the middle of his back.
“That,” explained Ivan, “is the muzzle of your Browning.”
“If you’re going to return my property,” said Drexel, “I wish you’d return it by some less direct route. You might hand it around me, for instance.”
“We don’t know your game,” said Nicolai, “but if you make one suspicious move, or one cry, that pistol will go off.”
“All right. But say there, Ivan, be careful, will you! I’ve got used to that spinal column ofmine, and if you spoiled it I might never get another that suited me as well. Drive on.”
The horse started up. But before it had fairly swung into a trot, some one running behind cried out, “Wait! Wait!”
They drew up, and a man thrust a piece of paper into Nicolai’s hand and immediately turned back. Nicolai opened the paper and glanced at it.
“Of all the strange things!” he cried, and turned the paper over to Ivan.
“The devil!” exclaimed Ivan. “Where did it come from?”
“The man who brought it looks like a servant,” said Nicolai, who was peering over his shoulder. “He is entering that great house.”
“More wonderful still!” cried Ivan. “But the writing is certainly hers!”
“And the signature! And an order is an order.”
“Yes.”
“See here, boys,” spoke up the mystified Drexel. “What does all this mean?”
“I don’t know,” said Nicolai, as he threw open the robes. “But the order says you are to go back to the person you were talking to.”
Drexel sprang from the sleigh. “Good-bye,” he shouted, and made for the Valenko door.
The footman ushered him up past the drawing-room, where he had so lately sat, and in which he glimpsed several new callers, and on back into a small rear drawing-room. Here an open fire wasblazing, and beside it stood the tall slender figure of the princess, the same haughty, magnificent pride in her bearing. She did not give Drexel a look. He paused within the door, wondering, palpitant.
“Andrei,” said she to the footman, “give my excuses to any persons waiting and any who may come, and say that for the present I am engaged.”
“Yes, princess.”
“And, Andrei—shut the door.”
“Yes, princess.”
As the door closed the pride and hauteur suddenly faded out of her, and there she was smiling at him brightly, half-mischievously.
“Well, John—” said she, in easy English.