CHAPTER XXIXTO-MORROW?
THE next fifteen minutes, when Drexel looks back upon them, present nothing but a blur of ecstatic relief. Distinct remembrance begins with his being ushered to a certain door—a door within which, excited as he was, he recalled that the princess ten days before had thrown off her mask to him.
He entered.
There she was!—in a convalescent’s robe, half reclining in a great chair soft with many cushions. He could but stare. But a few hours since and he had seen her in the coarse gray garments of death. But a few hours—and there she was!
“Close the door, Andrei,” she said.
The door closed.
She rose up in all her superb young beauty and came to him, her arms outstretched, her face a glory of love.
“Oh, Henry! Henry!”
“Sonya! My Sonya!”
And he caught her to him.
Ah, that minute against her heart!... It was payment and more for all his fortnight’s painand danger—aye, and payment for the pain and longing of all the long years to come!
And then she disengaged herself, and took his pale cheeks in her two hands, and gazed into his face, her eyes ashine with tears and love and wonder.
“It was brave!—brave!—splendid!” she said in a trembling whisper. “But I forgot—you are wounded!”
She led him to a divan before the glowing fire, and was going on with her praise, but he caught a hand and pressed it to his heart. “Feel it! Another word will kill me with happiness. Please don’t, Sonya!”
He begged her to tell him what had happened during the day and how she had come home. An hour after leaving the Fortress, she said, they had deserted the van and scattered, she going into hiding in the home of a trusted friend. Here she had lain all day, not daring to move till she learned how matters stood. By the coming of dusk her course was resolved upon. Only three persons, besides her friends, knew the identity of Sonya Varanova, her father, Freeman and Prince Berloff. The two last, in the interest of their crafty scheme, she was certain had told no one—and now they were dead; her father she knew she could trust. Dressed as a working-girl, she had hurried through the disguising darkness across the city, had watched her chance and entered the servants’ door unnoticed, had slipped unseen up to the sick-room where watchwas still being kept—and had become once more Princess Valenko.
As for the others: the faces of the escort had not been seen, they could not be identified if caught, and furthermore they were all as clever at hiding as the fox. Borodin and Razoff were already on their way out of Russia, in the guise of immigrants bound for America—of course, to return in a few weeks to resume their revolutionary work. They were all quite safe.
They might be safe, but his concern was not for them. He looked at that fair dark face, with its crown of glorious black. Yes, she was again the princess, but——
“But you are still in danger!” cried he.
“And who in Russia, with a soul, is not?”
“But not such danger as you! You may still be found out. And then——”
He sickened as he saw her again in last night’s danger, with this time no rescue for her. “I cannot bear to think of that!” he cried desperately. “Sonya, come with me to America!”
“That’s what my heart wants most of all to do,” said she.
He caught her hands in joy. “Then you will come?”
Her face grew gray with pain, and she sighed.
“If I only could!”
“You can!”
She slowly shook her head.
“I cannot, dear. If my country were happy, I would. Ah, but I would! But at the time of my country’s agony, I cannot think first of my own happiness. I cannot desert her in the time of her distress.”
“Then I will stay with you!” he cried. “I’ll stay with you, and help you!”
“I cannot let you. Father has told me how the description of Captain Laroque is everywhere. You are safe for perhaps only a few hours. You must leave at once.”
He thought a moment. “You are right,” he said. “And leave for a greater reason than my own safety. You have an alibi; no one will suspect the sick Princess Valenko. But should I stay, and should we be seen together, I the double of Captain Laroque, you the double of the escaped prisoner—that would rouse a fatal suspicion. Yes—I must leave at once.”
“I was thinking of your safety alone,” said she.
“But to go away to placid safety, leaving you to undertake new perils!” he groaned. If at least she were only safe! He thought of her father, and his fearing love seized at that hope. “Now that your father knows, will he not prevent your activities?”
“Father and I have just had a long talk. He cannot countenance what I do, and I cannot give up doing it. He cannot denounce me; nor will his honour let him continue in power and keep silent. So he is going to resign; he had been consideringthat, anyhow, for he is close upon seventy. We are going to part—to part in love. He is going to retire to one of his estates.”
“And you,” he cried despairingly, “are going to plunge into new dangers!”
“Whatever danger my country’s freedom requires—I must.”
“Sonya! Oh, Sonya!” and her name came out as a sob.
“But, dear—would you have me suffer these wrongs in silence?” she asked softly.
“I would have my love be safe!” he cried in anguish.
“Would you have me apathetically content?” she asked.
“Ah, you know, dearest,” he moaned, “that I would have you be yourself!”
“Yes, I knew,” she said softly.
He gazed at her in an agony of longing. There was a sudden flare of hope.
“You said—a moment ago—that if your country did not need you, you would come to me.”
“And so I would!” she breathed.
“Then if there comes a day when your country is set free?”
“That day I’ll come to you!” she said.
But hope as suddenly died to ashes. “But moving among such dangers, you may never see that day!”
“Who knows? Six months—a year—more perhaps—and then——”
“Don’t!” he whispered, and he tried to close his eyes against the vision she had conjured up.
“If when you are back in America, you should hear ... anything, don’t take it with too much sorrow,” she went on. “Remember that, foreknowing the end, I have gone to it willingly, gladly—for my country’s sake.”
She said it quietly, with clear eyes, even faintly smiling. For many moments he gazed upon her, for whom life held every good there was, yet counting self as least of all. And as he gazed, something of her spirit crossed to him. Personal sorrow, personal happiness, seemed to grow a minor thing. Half his pain was swept away, and into him there thrilled a strange new exaltation.
“It is to do such things, I suppose, that we are given life,” he whispered.
Her gazed softened, her voice sank to an exquisite tenderness. “And though I stay, and you go, and half the world shall lie between us, we are not giving one another up, dearest. I shall ever be with you.”
“And I with you, my darling!” he breathed.
They talked on, of love, of danger, of what the future might hold, and then of love again. And thus their one short hour together sped away, and the time came when he must go. Their hands clasped and he looked long, long, into that glorious face which it might never be his to gaze upon again.Then he strained her to him.... And then they parted.
Parted, and yet not parted. For in the days when steam hurled land and sea behind him, and in those farther days when the fight with his uncle was on (and a fight it was indeed! as his uncle had promised), her spirit was as a presence at his side, giving him new strength and new courage, making it easier to live humbly and bravely, and play his part as a man. It was as she in their last moment had said to him: “We shall be as husband and wife whom a duty higher than happiness keeps each in his own land.”
Every day or two, at the pleasure of ocean mails, there comes a letter, bearing him fresh assurance of her love. But writ in fear of the censor’s eye, it gives no hint of what she does, no whisper of what may be her danger. Of that he can only guess. And after each such letter he strains to peer beyond time’s curtain. After each such letter a hope that will not die breathes daringly in the ear of his heart that to him may yet be granted the fulness of bliss—that Freedom may yet be won for Sonya’s people—that she may come to him!
But, ah—the fear of that to-morrow when the letters may cease to come!...
THE END