CHAPTER XXIIITHE LAST CARD
DREXEL turned from the Valenko mansion a few minutes before Berloff and his party entered it. Though harrowed by the evening’s misfortune, there was a minor matter of which he had to think as he slipped cautiously away—whither should he take himself?
He could return to the Hotel Europe, and there be safe, if he but kept near his uncle’s family and had no communication with the revolutionists; but this would be equivalent to deserting Sonya, and deserting her in the hour of her direst need. Sabatoff was still at liberty; if they two could consult there was a chance, slender to be sure, but still a chance, that they could evolve some plan whereby Sonya and the other prisoners might be saved. Whatever the danger to himself, he would try for that slender chance.
But where should he go for the night? His home of the past week was ashes, his friends scattered or under arrest; to go to an hotel, no matter how obscure, would be a dangerous risk, with all the city’s police and spies on the watch for him; and as for walking the street this arctic night, it meant, if not capture,then at least a possible death from freezing. He knew the address of but one free revolutionist, Sabatoff, and to go to him at such a suspicious hour involved the likelihood of bringing disaster upon that important person. But somewhere he had to go, and Sabatoff’s was the only where; and toward his house he set out. Sabatoff, he judged, would hardly be asleep after the evening’s catastrophe, and would himself answer his ring. If one of the Czar-loving servants came to the door, he would leave some message in keeping with his gendarme’s uniform and go away.
After half an hour’s walk Drexel came to Sabatoff’s house. He searched the street with his eyes; it was empty, and confident that he was unobserved, he stepped quickly into the doorway and rang. There was a long wait; then steps sounded and the door opened. He had been right in his conjecture. The person at the door was Sabatoff.
“It is I—Drexel,” he whispered.
Sabatoff drew him in. “Quick, then—and silent.”
With no other word the official led the way up a flight of stairs and into a room which Drexel saw was the library. In a minute footsteps shuffled by. Sabatoff opened the door an inch.
“You need not bother, Pavel,” he called. “I answered the ring. It was only a telegram.”
There was a sleepy mumble, then the footsteps faded away toward the top of the house.
Sabatoff locked the door. Drexel now made known his need of shelter, and Sabatoff assured him that he could have refuge in this same room till the morrow; that sofa there could be his bed. Drexel then spoke of the possibility of freeing the prisoners. Sabatoff saw little hope, but favoured trying their utmost. However, it would be a waste of time to discuss a scheme until they knew just how matters stood. He would acquaint himself with the situation to-morrow, and they would then consider plans.
After Drexel had related his night’s experiences, Sabatoff withdrew—not that he expected to sleep, but it was wisdom to avoid the possibility of his servants missing him from his bed. Though the hour was already four, the night that followed was the longest of Drexel’s life. He could not have a light, he could not move about—either might reveal to the servants that a stranger was in the house. He could only lie motionless upon the couch and wait—wait—wait for the morrow, and think of Sonya in her damp and gloomy dungeon.
Morning came at length. Sabatoff smuggled in some fruit and bread. “I have told my servants that I have locked this room to make sure that some papers I have been arranging shall not be disturbed,” he said. “I may not be back till afternoon. Anyhow, it will not be safe for you to leave the house till it’s dark again.”
The hours that followed were like the hours that had gone before; hours of tense, inactive waiting,filled with thoughts of Sonya. Once, to be sure, he did recall that to-morrow his cousin was to be married to Berloff, and that he had as yet done nothing to save her from what could only be gilded misery with that relentless villain. But Alice’s approaching misfortune was quickly obliterated by the far greater disaster of her who was a thousand times more dear to him—her whom he had kissed once, then lost.
Three o’clock came, and with it darkness. Soon Sabatoff entered the room, locked the door, and lit the gas. There was an ominous whiteness in his face.
“What is it?” Drexel whispered, new terror in his heart.
“This afternoon while in my office a record passed through my hands that told me something it was plain we revolutionists were not intended to know.”
“Yes, yes?”
“The worst has happened. Sonya and Borodin are condemned to die.”
Drexel’s legs gave way beneath him and he sank slowly to the couch. “Condemned to die?”
Sabatoff nodded. “Condemned by their father.”
There was silence.
Drexel’s lips formed: “When do they——” and stilled.
“At four to-morrow morning.”
“In twelve hours!” he breathed.
Even in this reeling moment Drexel recognized that Freeman was in this crowning calamity. Whyhad not his hand been stronger out there upon the frozen river! And he recognized in it the diabolic cunning of Berloff—and he recognized that the prince’s motive was the Valenko fortune.
He sprang up frantically. “We must do something—at once!”
“Yes—but what?” said Sabatoff.
What indeed? What could their scattered forces do against those mighty walls, in the bare dozen hours that remained? The two men gazed at each other in silence.
After a moment Drexel gave a start. “There is only one chance!” he breathed quickly.
“And that?”
“I am certain General Valenko does not know whom he condemned. If he is told, he may do something.”
“And then again he may not. You know what a stern old Roman he is.”
“But he loves his daughter!”
“And even if he wants to save them he may be able to do little,” continued Sabatoff. “In the eyes of the Government Sonya and Borodin are flagrantly guilty. The Government may be inclined to treat them with especial harshness as examples to warn the rest of the nobility from the same course.”
“But he may be able to postpone the execution,” Drexel cried desperately. “Or have it changed to exile to Siberia for life. This is better, at least, than death in a few hours. It is worth trying!”
“Worth trying—yes. I was not against the plan. I was merely pointing out that we should be conservative in our hopes—that there is only a bare chance.”
“A bare chance, yes—but an only chance! I shall go at once!”
Sabatoff caught his arm. “Wait! It’s walking into the lion’s den. He may put his duty above his love. If he does, he will surely arrest the messenger as being another revolutionist. I shall go myself.”
There was a debate upon this point, but Sabatoff had to yield. “Very well. But you must not go to him in that uniform; that may suggest to him that you are the stranger who escaped last night as a gendarme. I shall send my servants away on errands for half an hour, and in the meantime you can get into some of my clothes and leave the house unobserved.”
Twenty minutes later Drexel slipped cautiously from the house, and after walking swiftly for a block caught a sleigh. As he sped along he built a plan upon his hope that Sonya’s sentence might be commuted to exile to Siberia. He would organize a secret expedition, manage her escape from the mines of Eastern Siberia or from some stockaded prison above the Arctic circle, fly with her to the Pacific coast and carry her to safety in America.
As he drew up before the Valenko palace he cast a glance up at the softly glowing windows of the princess’s sick-room, then hurriedly rang.Luckily the general was in and Drexel was ushered back into his home office.
The general rose from his papers and greeted Drexel with that finished courtesy which even the harshest of Russia’s high officials bestow upon foreigners. “You left us very suddenly out at Prince Berloff’s, Mr. Drexel,” he said. “You have just got back from Moscow, I suppose.”
“Yes,” said Drexel.
“In good time for Miss Howard’s marriage. And how is my niece?”
“I have not yet seen her.”
“Ah, out I suppose. She is in great demand. She will make a very popular Russian, your cousin.” He held out a golden cigarette case.
“I don’t care to smoke—thank you, prince.”
“Pardon me if I do,” and he lit a cigarette and settled back in comfort.
“I—the fact is,” Drexel began with an effort, “this is not a social call. I should have said so. I came on business.”
“Business?” The prince raised his heavy eyebrows. “I am at your service.”
For a moment Drexel hesitated; and for that moment he wondered how that stern old warrior, puffing there at his ease, would take the revelation about his son and daughter. Would he inflexibly allow their execution to go on? And he had an instantaneous fear for himself. Would he order his arrest when he guessed his connection with the revolutionists?
“I am at your service,” the prince repeated.
“I came about two prisoners whom you ordered to be executed to-morrow morning—Borodin and Sonya Varanova.”
The prince straightened up. “How did you learn of this, Mr. Drexel?” he asked sharply.
“It does not matter, since it is true. Do you know who Borodin is?”
“Pardon me, Mr. Drexel, if I refuse to be catechized upon matters pertaining to my official business,” he returned, coldly.
“And pardon me, prince, if I insist.”
The tense seriousness of Drexel caught his attention. “Eh—what’s the matter?”
“Do you know who he is?”
“Oh, I suppose there is no reason why I should not tell you; it will be all over the city to-morrow. He is Borski.”
Drexel leaned forward. “Yes—but do you know who else he is?”
“I think that knowing he is Borski is quite enough,” was the grim response.
“Not enough for you, prince.”
“For me? What do you mean?”
“That for you he is some one far more important than Borski.”
“Who?”
“Prince Vladimir Valenko.”
The commanding figure rose, and the ruddy colour fled his cheeks.
“My son?”
“Your son.”
“You are—you are certain of this?”
“Certain.”
He stared at Drexel in dumbfoundment.
Drexel stood up. “And do you know who Sonya Varanova is?”
“Who is she?”
“Princess Olga Valenko.”
“Olga!” he gasped.
His face overspread with ashy horror. But the next instant it cleared, and he gave a cry of relief.
“It’s all a mistake, Mr. Drexel! But for a moment, how you did frighten me!”
“It is not a mistake!”
“It is, and the proof of it is that my daughter is in this house, dangerously ill.”
“But should she not be in this house, what would that prove?”
“Not in this house?” He fell back a pace.
“Look in her room,” said Drexel.
The prince gazed a moment at Drexel’s pale face, then turned and fairly plunged away. “Keep the deception from the servants,” Drexel warned in a whisper as he went through the door.
Two minutes later he reëntered the room. His face was blanched and was filled with fear and horror. “She’s not there—you may be right—I am going to the Fortress,” he said in a husky whisper.
He started out. Drexel caught his arm.
“What are you going to do?”
“I do not know.”
“But I must know what you do!”
“Wait here, then,” he said.
A chaos of fear, doubt, pride, shame and wrath, the prince sent his horse galloping past the palaces that border the Neva, over the Palace Bridge, and through the dark, arched gateway of the Fortress. Here he sprang from his sleigh and started to hurry into the governor’s office; then remembering himself, he slowed down and strode in with all the dignity of a military governor.
The place of the imprisoned Governor Delwig had been that day filled by Colonel Kavelin of Odessa, who had previously been determined on as Delwig’s successor and who had arrived in St. Petersburg the evening before. The new chief of the prison, burly, heavy-faced, greeted Prince Valenko with obsequious, flurried pleasure, which the prince returned with the hauteur that a high official gives one far beneath him.
“I came over, Colonel Kavelin,” he said, “on a matter of business concerning the prisoners Borodin and Sonya Varanova.”
“Yes, yes,” said the gratified governor. “All is ready for the execution. Everything will be carried out just as Your Excellency commanded.”
“I desire to examine them upon certain points. Let me see them at once.”
“Certainly. Will Your Excellency examine them here? I can be a witness to their testimony, and my clerk here can take it down.”
“No. I wish to see them in their cells, alone. Put them both into one cell.”
“It shall be done immediately,” said the governor, and withdrew.
He presently returned, and led the prince through chill, dark corridors. The utter prison stillness was broken only by the chimes of the Fortress Cathedral, sounding out the hymn, “How Glorious is Our God in Zion.” Before the dungeon doors stood silent guards. Here was the dungeon said to be the one in which Peter the Great with his own hand slew his son Alexis; here the dungeons in which Catherine the Great entombed those who dared lift their voices against her murder of her husband. Dungeons of a black and awful past, of a black and awful present.
Colonel Kavelin stopped and thrust a key into a door. Prince Valenko asked the governor to call for him in fifteen minutes; then he stepped into the dungeon and the bolts grated behind him.
There was a table, a chair and a bed, all chained to the granite wall. On the table burned a single candle, on the bed sat a man and a woman, their arms about each other.
The prince stood stock still, all his fears come true. The pair arose. For a space father and children gazed at each other in a silence that was a part of the vast chill silence of this vast cold tomb. Firstthe prince’s gaze had centred on Sonya; then on the son whom he had not seen these five years—a man of thirty, as tall as his father, but more slender, with soft, dark hair brushed straight back from a broad forehead. There were dignity and nobility and power in his bearing, and high purpose glowed in his deep-set eyes.
It was Sonya that ended the silence. She took a hesitant step forward.
“Father!” she whispered.
He did not move. Now that doubt and suspense were over, it was the turn of wrath. His cheeks slowly crimsoned, the thick gray brows drew together, and from beneath them flashed an awful fire.
“So!” he burst out; “these two political criminals are my own children!”
They did not speak.
His figure seemed to swell with wrathful majesty. “My own children!” he ejaculated. “The Czar had faith in me. He made me military governor of St. Petersburg because he thought that I, above all others, was the one to subdue the revolt in this the heart of Russia. And now, at the head of that revolt I find my own son, my own daughter! My own children the arch-traitors!”
“Not traitors, father,” said Sonya, “but patriots of a truer sort!”
“Traitors, I say! As for Vladimir there, I may not be surprised. But you, Sonya, you whom I loved and cherished and trusted, of whom I was soproud—to think that you could secretly join these vile enemies of our country!”
“Our country’s enemies!” Borodin repeated quietly, but with a quick flashing of his eyes. “Who are they? Those who are crushing it into darkness, or those who are striving to lift it into liberty and light?”
“Silence! Nothing from you!” cried the general. “It is you that led Sonya into this. You are the sole cause of our disgrace and shame!”
“Perhaps another generation will not call it shame.”
The quiet answer only roused the proud old autocrat the more.
“But, father,” put in Sonya quickly, “at such a time as this cannot we forget these differences——”
“Forget! How forget, when to-morrow all St. Petersburg, all Russia, will know that the children of General Valenko are traitors? Can I forget this disgrace upon the name that for a thousand years has been one of Russia’s proudest?”
“That disgrace,” returned Borodin steadily, “may later prove the Valenkos’ greatest honour.”
His father did not heed him. “To-morrow our name will be in the mire,” he went on with mounting wrath. “To-morrow I shall be sneered at all over the land. The revolution-queller, who found the revolution sprang from his own family! How Russia will laugh!”
His voice grew even more wroth, and his face darkened with accusation. “You have turned against your father—you have turned against yourclass—you have turned against your Czar! But one disgrace I shall not suffer. They shall never say of me that I shrank from duty because the criminals were my own children. You are guilty! You must suffer the penalty of your guilt!”
He stood before them the very figure on an heroic scale of a wrathful, implacable, almighty judge. There was a moment of deep silence. Through the heavy masonry came the tones of the Cathedral clock, tolling the hour of six.
“We knew the risk, and we accepted it,” said Borodin. “So we do not complain at your decision.”
“Yes, you are doing your duty as you see it,” said Sonya. “But even if we cannot agree, father, can we not admit that we all have tried to do what we have thought best for our own country, and part without blame or bitterness?”
She took Borodin’s arm and drew him forward, front to front with his infuriate sire and judge. “Since we are parting forever, won’t you and Vladimir part as friends, father?”
The general gazed at his son—at his daughter. They were pale, but their eyes were clear, their mien tranquilly intrepid. Their calm acceptance of their fate sobered his wrath, but stern judgment still sat upon his brow.
At length he spoke. “And you are willing to die?” he asked his son.
“Since it must be so—yes.”
“And you, Sonya?”
“I do not want to die, but I am quite ready.”
“And do you not regret what you have done?”
“I only regret,” said she, “that it all turned out so ill.”
There was a knock at the dungeon’s door, and the governor called that the fifteen minutes were at an end.
The general paled. A spasmodic twitching rippled across his stern, strong face.
“I must go now,” he said.
Sonya stretched out to him both her hands and her eyes filled with tears. “Good-bye, father. And in the—the future—try to see that the cause we died for——”
There was a breaking, a surging up, within him, and suddenly his arms opened and he clutched her to him.
“No! No! You shall not die!” he cried convulsively. “You shall not die—neither of you! I’ll move heaven and earth! I’ll arrange it somehow. How, I do not know—but I’ll arrange it!”
He kissed her again and again, tears flushing his old eyes; and he embraced and kissed his disowned son. Then he tore himself from their arms, saying that the time was short, that he must make haste, and that they should have no fear.
At the door he paused a moment to regain his calm. “I am ready, Colonel Kavelin,” he called. The bolts grated back and he strode out into the governor’s company, with the cold, haughty, indifferent bearing that becomes an autocrat.