"I suppose I was struck on the head by some of the debris and knocked
insensible--eh?" I asked.
"Yes, probably," he replied. "But the doctors say the wound is only a
superficial one, and in a week's time you'll be quite right again. So
cheer up, old chap. You'll get the long leave which you put in for the
other day, and a bit more added to it, no doubt."
"But this state of things is terrible," I declared, shifting myself upon
my side so that I could better look into his face. "Surely the
revolutionists could have had no antagonism towards the Grand Duke
Nicholas! He was most popular everywhere."
"My dear fellow, who can gauge the state of the Russian mind at this
moment? Plots seem to be of daily occurrence."
"If you believe the reports of the Secret Police. But I, for one,
don't," I declared frankly.
"No, no," he said reprovingly. "Don't excite yourself. Be thankful
that you've escaped. You might have shared the same fate as those poor
Cossacks."
"I know," I said. "I thank God that I was spared. But it will be in
the London papers, no doubt. Reuter's man will send it; therefore, will
you wire to my mother at once. You know her address--Hayford Manor,
near Newquay, Cornwall. Wire in my name, and tell her that the affair
is greatly exaggerated, and that I'm all right, will you?"
He promised.
I knew with what eagerness my aged mother always followed all my
movements, for I made it a practice to write to her twice every week
with a full report of my doings. I was as devoted to her as she was to
me. And perhaps that accounted for the fact that I had never married.
My father, the Honourable Colin Trewinnard, had been one of the largest
landowners in Cornwall, and my family was probably one of the oldest in
the county. But evil times had fallen upon the estate in the last years
of my father's life; depreciation in the value of agricultural land,
failing crops and foreign competition had ruined farming, and now the
income was not one-half that it had been fifty years before. Yet it was
sufficient to keep my mother and myself in comfort; and this, in
addition to my pay from the Foreign Office, rendered me better off than
a great many other men in our Service.
Through Stoyanovitch, on the following morning, I received a message
from Natalia. He said:
"Her Highness, whom I saw in the Palace an hour ago, told me to say that
she sent you her best wishes for a speedy recovery. She is greatly
grieved over the death of her father, and, of course, the Court has gone
into mourning for sixty days. She told me to tell you that as soon as
you are able to return to the Embassy she wishes to see you on a very
important matter."
"Tell her that I am equally anxious to see her, and that she has all my
sympathy in her sad bereavement," I replied.
"Terrible, wasn't it?" the Imperial equerry exclaimed. "The poor girl
looks white, haggard and entirely changed."
"No wonder--after such an awful experience."
"There were, I hear, twenty more arrests to-day. Markoff had audience
with His Majesty at ten o'clock this morning, and eight of the prisoners
of yesterday have been sent to Schusselburg."
"From which they will never emerge," I said, with a shudder at the
thought of that living tomb as full of horrors as was the Bastille
itself.
"Well, I don't see why they should, my dear friend," the Captain
replied. "If I had had such an experience as yours, I shouldn't feel
very lenient towards them--as you apparently do."
"I am not thinking of the culprit," I said. "He certainly deserves a
death-sentence. It is the innocents who, here in Russia, suffer for the
guilty, with whom I deeply sympathise. Every day unoffending men and
women are arrested wholesale in this drastic, unrelenting sweeping away
of prisoners to Siberia. I tell you that half of them are loyal,
law-abiding subjects of the Tzar."
The elegant equerry-in-waiting only grinned and shrugged his shoulders.
He was too good a Russian to adopt such an argument. As personal
attendant upon His Majesty, he, of course, supported the Imperial
autocracy.
"This accursed system of police-spies and _agents-provocateurs_
manufactures criminals. Can a man wrongly arrested and sent to the
mines remain a loyal subject?"
"The many have to suffer for the few. It is the same in all lands," was
his reply. "But really the matter doesn't concern me, my dear
Trewinnard."
"It will concern you one day when you are blown up as I have been," I
exclaimed savagely.
Shortly afterwards he left, and for hours I lay thinking, my eyes upon
that square gilt holy picture before me, the _ikon_ placed before the
eyes of every patient in the hospital. Nurses in grey and soldiers in
white cotton tunics passed and repassed through the small ward of which
I was the only occupant.
The pains in my head were excruciating. I felt as though my skull had
been filled with boiling water. Sometimes my thoughts were perfectly
normal, yet at others my mind seemed full of strange, almost ridiculous
phantasies. My whole career, from the days when I had been a clerk in
that sombre old-fashioned room at Downing Street, through my service at
Madrid, Brussels, Berlin and Rome to Petersburg--all went before me,
like a cinema-picture. I looked upon myself as others saw me--as a man
never sees himself in normal circumstances--a mere struggling entity
upon the tide of that sea of life called To-day.
We are so very apt to think ourselves indispensable to the world. Yet
we have only to think again, and remember that the unknown to-morrow may
bring, us death, and with it everlasting oblivion, as far as this world
is concerned. Queen Victoria and Pope Leo XIII were the two greatest
figures of our time; yet a month after their deaths people had to recall
who they were, and what they had actually done to earn distinction.
These modern days of rush and hurry are forgetful, irresponsible days,
when public opinion is manufactured by those who rule the halfpenny
press, and when the worst and most baneful commodities may be foisted
upon the public by means of efficient advertisement.
The cleverest swindler may by payment become a baronet of England, even
a peer of the realm, providing he subscribes sufficient to Somebody's
Newspaper Publicity Agency; and any blackguard with money or influence
may become a Justice of the Peace and sentence his fellows to fourteen
days' imprisonment.
But the reader will forgive me. Perhaps remarks such as these ill
become a diplomat--one who is supposed to hold no personal opinions.
Yet I assert that to-day there is no diplomat serving Great Britain in a
foreign country who is not tired and disgusted with his country's
antiquated methods and her transparent weaknesses.
The papers speak vigorously of Britain's power, but men in my service--
those who know real international truths--smile at the defiant and
well-balanced sentences of the modern journalist, whose blissful
ignorance of the truth is ofttimes so pathetic. Yes, it is only the
diplomat serving at a foreign Court who can view Great Britain from
afar, and accurately gauge her position among modern nations.
For ten days I remained in that whitewashed ward, many of my friends
visiting me, and Stoyanovitch coming daily with a pleasant message from
His Majesty. Then one bright morning the doctors declared me to be fit
enough to drive back to the Embassy.
An hour later, with my head still bandaged, I was seated in my own room,
in my own big leather armchair, with the July sun streaming in from
across the Neva.
Saunderson was sitting with me, describing the great pomp of the funeral
of the Grand Duke Nicholas, and the service at the Isaac Church, at
which the Tzar, the Court, and all the _corps diplomatique_ had
attended.
"By the way," he added, "a note came for you this morning," and he
handed me a black-edged letter, bearing on the envelope the Imperial
arms embossed in black.
I tore it open and found it to be a neatly-written little letter from
the Grand Duchess Natalia, asking me to allow her to call and see me as
soon as ever I returned to the Embassy.
"I must see you, Uncle Colin," she wrote. "It is most pressing. So do
please let me come. Send me word, and I will come instantly. I cannot
write anything here. _I must see you at once_!"