CHAPTER XIA BARGAIN IS RENEWED
THE next day they all went down to Prince Berloff’s—the Howards, Sonya and her father, Countess Baronova, Drexel, the prince, and besides them half a dozen high-born men and women who, Drexel soon discovered, had the grace and polish of courtiers and ladies-in-waiting, and a paste-jewel sparkle of talk, but who were just narrowness and stupidity surfaced with fine manners and fine clothes.
As Drexel had anticipated, Sonya wore toward him an air of haughty negligence—an air that held no faintest hint that they were on terms of friendship, much less that between them was a secret pact. He could but compare this cold creature of imperious indifference that the world saw with the frank, glowing, inspiring and inspired woman who the afternoon before had opened her soul to him. Though his uncle drew him aside and talked traction deal, and though he nodded now and then, Drexel took in hardly one of the fortune-pregnant sentences; his mind was all with Sonya. But he did not allow himself to think of love, though all his being tingled with it. After the manner in whichhe had proposed to her, offering to lift her to his shining heights out of her poverty and insignificance, he hardly dare again approach the subject. Besides, for all his American pride, he felt her to be immeasurably beyond his reach.
But if Sonya was distant, there was one who was not. In the latter half of the short journey Mr. Howard was summoned forward by his wife, and Drexel was following his uncle, when he was met in the corridor by Countess Baronova.
“I know your uncle was sent for; are you, too, under orders?” she asked lightly, with a smile.
“No.”
“Then, sir, I put you under orders. Come, talk to me.”
He fell in with her playful spirit, and bowed with an air that mocked the St. Petersburg courtiers. “Madame, I obey.”
“Come, then.”
She led the way back to a compartment in the rear of the car and they sat down facing each other. She was in a travelling gown of black velvet with long sweeping lines, and the black note was repeated with staccato effect by the studs of jet in her ears, and by her brilliant eyes; a darkly fascinating being whose gaze was open and direct, whose clear-skinned beauty was honest, owing not a tittle, as does most noble St. Petersburg beauty, to the false testimony of bleaching compounds and rouge-pots.
She leaned back with luxurious grace and smiledat him with frank good humour. “I know I’m very brazen to capture you in this manner, but that’s the privilege of an elderly widow.”
“Elderly?”
“Twenty-seven, sir!”
“Then that puts me, too, in the decrepit class.”
“Oh, a single man never grows too old for woman to smile at. He’s comparatively immortal.”
“Hum. And the moral to that is——”
“No, it isn’t. Be mortal—for some one woman’s sake. Thus the elderly widow advises. But besides my old age,” she went on, “I have another excuse for taking you prisoner. For a week or more I’ve been waiting to have a little chat with you.”
“I’ve—ah—been in Moscow, you know,” explained Drexel.
“Yes, I know. But now at last I have you at my mercy.” Her smile faded away, her face leaned nearer, and her rallying tone sank to a serious whisper. “I want to talk on an important matter, Mr. Drexel, and I am going to speak to you openly, frankly. I can play the diplomat, but with a man of affairs like you, I know it is best to come straight to the point.”
Since he had first met the countess, Drexel had known her as a popular figure in the brilliant society frequented by the high officials that surround the Czar and fill the ministries, by the smart and noble officers of the Imperial Guard, by that ever-changinginflux of officers who, after representing for a year or two the Czar’s autocratic might in some stupid, provincial town, or in some remote army station, come to St. Petersburg to renew themselves with a few months of the capital’s thoughtless gaiety. Yet he had guessed there was something beneath her surface of society devotee. She had piqued his curiosity, so now he felt a sudden flutter of interest as he said, “Please go on.”
Her dark, lustrous eyes searched deep into his own for a silent moment—then the elbow that supported her smooth cheek slipped yet nearer along the window-sill, and her voice dropped to a yet softer tone.
“You are a man to be trusted. I put myself, my life, in your hands.”
She glanced quickly at the door and back again. “I am a revolutionist.”
“A revolutionist!” he breathed.
“All my soul is with those who fight the Czar.”
He stared at her. Indeed, there was something beneath the surface! And that two such women as she and the princess should——
She interrupted his surprise with her rapid, barely audible words. “There is a noble part open to you, if you will only take it.”
“And that?”
“To help us.”
“How?”
“You have heard about Borodin—his arrest—what he means to the revolutionary cause?”
“Yes.”
“To rescue him is what at this moment we revolutionists desire most of all to do. If you would join us in that attempt, our chance of success would be greatly increased.”
“Increased? How?”
“You are shrewd,” she whispered. “And you could attempt bolder things than other men, for, your position being what it is, no one would suspect you. Yes, you could do much—much!”
She took his silence as a wish for something further before he answered. “If you will be with us I can arrange for you to meet our active leaders at once, and take part in their secret plannings. I can see from your face that you are wondering what, in return for all this, will be your reward. You would have a life-long sense of having helped a struggling nation to win the light.”
She hesitated—a soft red tinged her cheeks—her eyes fluttered down.
“And if the—the gratitude of a simple woman will mean anything—that gratitude you would ever have.”
There was no mistaking what she meant. Here was a situation, indeed, for a man newly in love! In his embarrassment Drexel knew not what to say that would carry him swiftly and safely by this delicate crisis in a manner to give no offense to thecountess, whom he liked and admired. He was floundering about in his mind for the proper phrase when she raised her bright, flushed face and met his gaze frankly.
“If you decide to be with us,” she went on, “I have a definite plan to suggest—one calling for immediate action. A plan I, personally, am trying to carry through. I am sure we could make it succeed—you and I.”
All her warm, excited beauty, all her fascination, were directed at him. He hardly knew how to parry.
“Before I decide,” he temporized, “I should want to know what the plan is.”
“Lean nearer. It is this. I am trying—s-s-sh! Some one is coming! I’ll tell you later, when the person goes.”
Her voice and face were all disappointment, but when Mr. Howard walked into the compartment, she greeted him with an easy, good-humoured smile. However, her plan Drexel was not then to know, for the journey ended without giving her an opportunity to finish what she had begun.
At the station were waiting four two-seated sleighs, each with three splendid blacks hitched abreast. It fell out that Drexel, the countess, Sonya and Berloff got into one sleigh, Sonya and Berloff in the front seat. As they flashed over the flat white country, tucked away in frozen sleep, Drexel involuntarily compared these two women, the one he did not love and felt sure he could have, and the onehe did love and knew he could not have—both beautiful, both clever, both so different from what they seemed to the world—both involved in the dangerous underground struggle against the Czar.
He could but notice with what ease Sonya talked with Berloff, that powerful antagonist with whom she was in deadly duel. He studied Berloff anew in the light of her startling revelation, and he saw anew the power, the resourcefulness, the relentless cunning behind that pale, refined face. In a struggle of wits against wits, he was an adversary that only the cleverest could hope to hold his own against. Moreover, he did not fight alone. Fighting with him, and for him, was his own army of near a hundred thousand spies, and besides these was the million of the standing army, and all the vast civil machinery of the State. Drexel drew a long breath.
The prince’s mansion sat in a great park of snow-drooped evergreens. It was a big, box-like, sprawling pile, as are most of the older country seats of the Russian nobility, but the plainness of its exterior prepared a surprise for him who entered for the first time. The furnishings were rich and quiet in their tone; the walls of the main rooms were hung with paintings, studies, etchings, chiefly works from the hands of the big Frenchmen of the nineteenth century; and everywhere were exquisite little bronzes, the best private collection in Russia. Berloff, so said his friends, could have been an eminent artist himself, had birth not destined him to greater things.
Drexel’s eyes were ever covertly watching Sonya—thrilled with the sense that he alone of all here knew the double part she played. Sonya at once became the dominant figure of the party. She did not seek attention, rather she seemed to disdain it; but, nevertheless, it focussed upon her, and with a magnificent indifference she accepted it as her due.
In the evening, when they were all in the music room, the countess surprised one of Drexel’s surreptitious glances at Sonya. “You seem to think with the rest of the men, that there is only one woman present, the princess,” she whispered.
“I had heard so much of her that I was curious,” Drexel returned.
“Allow the elderly widow to tell you that attention paid the princess is attention wasted. She will smile on nothing less than royal blood. Since we left Petersburg she has given you one casual glance and two casual words. Are my statistics correct?”
“They agree with my own.”
Her voice sank to a bare whisper. “And of course you know she has no sympathy with our movement to gain freedom. She believes in the divine rights of the high-born—that they are superior and should rule and have the earth, and that the many should be their footstool.”
He saw it was her wish to draw him into some retired corner and continue the conversation of the train; but this was not permitted her, for just then the debonair young lieutenant of the Czar’s Guardswho had been tripping airily among the perfumed heights of tenor arias from the Italian opera, left the piano, and there arose a demand that she should sing. In rebuke to these sweet soulless intricacies, so it seemed to Drexel, she sang several of the folk songs of little Russia—simple, plaintive airs that were the voice of the people’s heart speaking its joys and woes and aspirations—and sang them in a rich and soft contralto charged with feeling.
Drexel, stirred by her voice, felt his heart pulsing in warm sympathy with the beat of the song. The applauding guests thought she was moved by mere artistic sentiment. He knew better, and when he had a moment alone with her after she had finished, he told her how truly splendid had been her singing. She caught the sympathy in his voice and flashed at him a quick, bright look. “We’ll have you yet!” she whispered.
Prince Berloff, coming up, reminded her that he had promised to show her some new etchings that he had shown the other guests in the afternoon while she had been lying down, and he led her off to the library.
Could Drexel have only followed her!
The countess bestowed herself in a corner of a great leather divan, leaning back in luxurious grace, her cheek in one finely modeled hand. The prince closed the door and drew up a chair in front of her. There was controlled eagerness in his pale face.
“Well?” he asked in his low voice.
Triumph gleamed through the fringe of her half-closed eyes, but her manner was languorously reposeful.
“Well, I think we have him!”
“A-a-h!” breathed the prince. “You have definitely involved him in some plan?”
“Not yet. I’m leading him gently toward one. But he’s ready. He said as much to-night.”
“Good! And what plan?”
“I thought the one we knew was uppermost in the revolutionists’ minds would be the best—the freeing of Borodin.”
“You must use haste. Drexel is to be in Russia less than two weeks longer. When are you going to lead him definitely into the thing?”
“That depends,” she answered.
“On what?”
“On you.”
“On me?”
“On the reply you make to a pair of requests.”
“And what are they?”
“When you arranged with me to undertake this matter, you merely ordered me to lead Mr. Drexel into some revolutionary plot. You did not tell me why you wanted him to be involved in a plot, and I did not ask. But I ask now.”
The prince’s white brows drew together. “Countess, you are going too far!”
But the menace of his looks did not even ripple the countess’s repose.
“Then you refuse?”
“Most emphatically!”
“Well, anyhow, this first request was of minor importance,” she said easily. “And besides, for that matter, I know my question’s answer.”
He gave a slight start, then his face was again a cold mask.
“Indeed,” he said calmly. “How?”
“Oh, I could not help doing a little thinking—guessing—putting this and that together.”
“And my purpose?”
“To get Mr. Drexel out of the way.”
“Well?”
“And get him out of the way so that no suspicion or blame could attach to you,” she went on. “Get him involved in some revolutionary plot you were watching, have the gendarmes break in upon the plotters and kill Mr. Drexel in the struggle, or have him immediately executed with the others before his identity should be learned. Then when his fate became known, the Government would be very sorry—but really, you know, no one would be to blame but Mr. Drexel’s own rashness. And you could be very sympathetic with his family, and they would never guess that you were the man behind it. Very safe, prince—and very, very clever!”
The prince’s face was still a cold, impenetrable mask.
“Am I not right?”
“I do not choose to discuss my purpose,” he said.
Her head slowly nodded. “Oh, I am right!” She gazed into his face with keen, analyzing thought. “They say Richard the Third of England murdered cousins, uncles, all sorts of relatives, to get to the throne. Our own Catherine the Great had her husband, Czar Paul, killed that she might become ruler of Russia. You have a family likeness to them, prince. I should not care to stand between you and anything you desire.”
“I have not noticed any particular strain of tenderness in the Countess Baronova,” he returned dryly. “You spoke of a second request.”
“Yes. The important one. If I am to go ahead, you must pay me more.”
“Pay you more! I have offered you ten thousand rubles for this above your regular salary!”
“I know. I must have fifty thousand.”
“Fifty thousand! Never!”
“You are in earnest?” she asked quietly.
“Of course! I have thousands of persons who will do this for what I offered you—or a tenth the sum.”
“But do it as well? Anyone else who could draw him into a revolutionary plot—so that it will be safe for you—so that the blame will all be on him? Eh, prince?”
“Your demand is absurd!” he said.
“Then I will go no further with Mr. Drexel. You and I are through with this matter, I suppose. Well, I’m quite as well pleased with your refusal.”She started to rise. “Let us return to the others.”
“Wait, sit down,” he said sharply. She did so. “Tell me why you are just as well pleased with my refusal?”
“Perhaps,” said she calmly, “it may be in my mind that by breaking with you I may get something I prefer above your fifty thousand.”
“And that?”
“I do not choose to discuss my purpose,” she said, mimicking his cold sentence of a moment before.
At this “checkmate” he bit the inner edge of his thin lip.
“Oh, I’d just as soon tell you,” she went on. “The fact is, I’m getting tired of my work. Not tired of the pleasure of society, nor tired of my particular friends, the young officers who come to St. Petersburg to spend their furloughs. But tired of having it whispered about secretly that I have liberal views, and thereby drawing to me the officers who hold revolutionary opinions. Tired of sympathetically leading them on, little by little, to confide in me. Tired of telling you, and having them disappear—poor fellows!”
“Um. What would have been the position of the widow of the bankrupt Count Baronoff but for this salary?”
“I have needed the money, yes. But now, I’m tired. Besides, if I’m found out, or if a few wrinklescome, my usefulness to you is over and the salary stops. I’ve been doing a little serious thinking, and here’s what I’ve decided. If I have so infatuated Mr. Drexel that I can lead him into a plot that will make him your victim, why should I not——”
She stopped, and her eyes gleamed tantalizingly at the prince.
“Well?”
“Well, instead of that, why should I not make myself your cousin?”
“You mean marry him?”
“He’s rich—has a big career before him—and I rather like him. Why not?”
“Why not?” cried the prince in a low, harsh voice, leaning towards her. “Because I will not have my plans interfered with! Because I will not have you for a relative!”
“Thanks for the compliment, prince,” she said dryly. “But how will you prevent it?”
“By telling him what you are—the cleverest, keenest, most heartless woman spy in Russia!”
“Perhaps I also might tell something.”
“What do you mean?”
“I might tell Miss Howard who you are—the ruthless, secret——”
He rose and stood above her, his eyes glittering.
“Be careful, countess,” he said slowly, ominously. “You yourself have said that I would hesitate at nothing. Well, be warned by your own words!”
Her daring had carried her too far. She knewthis man, and knew that if he but willed it she would mysteriously disappear never to be seen again. Her face kept its calm, but inwardly she could but flinch before the dark menace of his look.
After a moment, she spoke again.
“I think we will both go farther, prince, if we go together and in harmony. Come, which is it to be—fifty thousand—or am I to withdraw from the affair?”
Berloff did not answer at once; then he said:
“Fifty thousand.”
“So be it,” said she.
“But you must finish this at once.”
“I’ll claim the money within three days.” She rose and took his arm. “Come, let us go back to the others.”
Two minutes later she was again with Drexel, trying with look and veiled words to win his sympathy for her cause.