A SHE DEVIL.
The more I contemplated the position the less I liked it, and the more
urgent appeared the reasons for hurrying Olga out of the country.
All my care was for her. Before this new feeling of mine for her had
forced itself upon me, the situation had been really a game of wits
with my life as the stake; but now Olga's life, or at least her
liberty, was also at stake. It was there the crisis pinched me till I
winced and writhed under it. Fear had got hold of me at last and I
tugged restlessly at the chain.
That night and the next day, the day of Christian Tueski's funeral,
were occupied with heavy duties, because the authorities, both military
and civil, persisted in believing there was danger of an emeute. I
could have counselled them differently if I had dared to open my lips.
At least I thought I could; although I did not then hold the key to the
mystery.
I got it from Paula Tueski.
In the afternoon of the day but one after the funeral, I had a brief
note asking me to call on her.
I went and found her surrounded by all the signs and trappings of the
deepest mourning. She received me very gravely, and while there was
anyone in the room, she played the part of the sorrowing, disconsolate
widow: but the instant we were alone she shewed a most indecent and
revolting haste to let me know her mind.
"We are alone, now, Alexis," she said.
"I have called as you asked and because I wished to express my
sympathy...."
"Psh! Don't let us be hypocrites, you and I," she exclaimed, half
angrily, and with great energy. "I do not pretend to you that I am
sorry to be free, and don't you pretend to me either."
I didn't answer, and my silence irritated her.
"Would you have me weep, tear my hair, put ashes on my head and grovel
in the dust because the biggest villain and coward and beast that ever
lived in human shape is dead? I hated him living; shall I love him
dead?"
"At least the dead are dead, and to revile them is mere empty
brutality," said I, somewhat harshly.
"Then I like empty brutality if it relieves my feelings. God! I have
been a hypocrite long enough. I should hate myself if I did not speak
the truth to you."
I shrugged my shoulders. I had no answer.
"Why didn't you send a wreath of pure white flowers as an emblem of
your regard? Why not a message to swell the millions of lies that men
have uttered in their squalid fear of offending the Government by
silence? Ugh! It makes me sick when I think of it all;" and she
shuddered as if in disgust. "He was a devil, and I won't call him by
any softer name merely because his power to harm is gone. Didn't he
try to murder you? And wasn't it jealousy? Ah, we have much to be
thankful to the Nihilists for, you and I." There was an indescribable
suggestion of a hidden meaning about this.
I hated the woman.
"You have no clue yet, I suppose?"
"Yes, I have a clue," she replied, with a laugh that sounded like a
threat. "I can put my hand on the murderer when I will--and I will, if
he proves a traitor."
"You are in a dramatic mood," I answered. "Who is the man? Why not
denounce him? Surely this act is what you must call treachery."
"There was a Nihilist plot to kill the man," she said, speaking with
contemptuous flippancy of accent of the dead.
"Yes, I told you that myself," I replied.
"It was because of that he died."
"So everybody thinks."
"And how do you account for it?" she asked, looking at me keenly.
"I have no more idea than yourself."
She laughed; and a hard forced laugh it was. Then she got up from her
chair and walked twice up and down the room in dead silence. She
stopped in front of me and stared down into my eyes.
"Alexis, do you really love me?"
The question was an exceedingly unpleasant one and filled me with
disgust.
"Surely this is no time for us to speak of such things," I said.
"Do you love me, Alexis," she repeated.
"I will not answer now," I said, rising.
"Why not? Why should we not speak of love now--now, aye, and always?
Or is your passion so poor and sickly a thing that a puff from the wind
of propriety kills it? Not speak of such things! I would plight my
love to you across the very body of the dead man!" She spoke with
passionate vehemence. "Remember what I told you--your life is mine.
You cannot escape me. Now, tell me, do you love me?"
"I have given my answer, and if you ask that question again to-day I
will not stop in the room," I said angrily: the woman's persistency
increasing my disgust.
She laughed--a half hysterical laugh of anger.
"So you will not stop in the room and will never, I suppose, return.
Be careful," she cried, with one of her quick passionate changes. "Or
I will send you away and never let you come back except begging for
mercy on your knees for yourself and your sister." She turned away and
stood by the window; and I could see by her movements that she was
struggling with violent emotions.
She came back at length, the face paler and the voice not so steady.
"I will ask you if you love me," she said. "And I dare you to go away
from the room."
I accepted the challenge without an instant's hesitation.
"I am going. I will see you when you are cooler," and I went to the
door.
With a quick rush she prevented my opening it, and putting her back to
it stared at me in the most violent passion, which thickened her voice
as she spoke.
"You shall go directly--if you wish to. You will make me hate you, one
day, Alexis, and then--I will kill you."
"It will be far better for me to come some other time," I said, anxious
to leave.
"You will have plenty of opportunities, never fear," she retorted, with
a very angry sneering laugh. "And what is more, you will not dare not
to use them. Listen--it is love for you drives me to this--a love that
you can never escape now, Alexis, even if you had the will."
She paused; but I said nothing. I had nothing to say. All I wished
was to get away.
"Do you think there is anything I would not do for your love, Alexis?
I have told you there is nothing--told you so scores of times. Now, I
have proved it. Do you hear--proved it. I proved it a few nights ago
when this hand plunged the dagger hilt deep into my husband's
heart--for your sake."
I started back and looked at the woman in horror.
"Yes, this hand"--she held it out--"so white, smooth, deft, and
shapely. Don't start from it. There is no blood shewing on it now.
And never was. I know how to thrust a dagger home too cleverly to
leave a trace of either blood or guilt on me. In all this Moscow of
ours the one person who is deemed above all others guiltless--is
myself. Had it been in reality the Nihilist deadly secret stroke that
men deem it, it could not have been more cunningly contrived, more
secretly planned, more fatally executed. Yet the motive was not hate
of a Government, but love for a man. For you, Alexis: you and you
only. Now do you wish to go?"
She moved away from the door; but I made no attempt to go. The horror
of her story had fascinated me.
"There was a tinge of hate in it, too, mark you, and more than a tinge.
But I'll tell you all. You ought to know, since you were in reality
the cause of all. You gave me the motive, suggested the occasion, and
provoked that which led to it. More than that, too, you can by a
single word from me be made to bear the brunt. Now, will you go?"
Was the woman mad that she spoke in this way? If so, there was a
devilish method in her madness, as the story she told quickly shewed me.
"I knew the day would come when either I should kill him or he would
kill me; for he was a devil. Well, you roused all that was most evil,
vicious, and fiendish in him in that interview; and when I saw him he
was like a man bereft of his wits. Every form of reproach he could
heap on me in cold, contemptuous, galling sneers he uttered with all
the calculated aggravation that could make a taunt unbearable. He
threatened me in every tone of menace: and when I answered, turned
suddenly furious and struck me violent blows and vowed to kill me. It
was then I recalled your words, that there was a Nihilist plot against
his life; and I vowed I would be the means of carrying it out; for I
knew I could easily put suspicion away from me. I lured him cunningly
to that part of the house where he was found, plunged the dagger into
his breast, put into his pocket the forged warning of a Nihilist
attack, opened the house at a point where a man could have entered,
fastened to the dagger the Nihilist watchword, and then crept away to
my own rooms."
"It was a hellish plot," I exclaimed, hotly.
"It was inspired by love for you, Alexis. It was truly 'For Freedom's
sake.' Freedom that should unite us for ever."
"Do you think I could ever be anything to a woman whose hand is red
with murder?" I cried, in indignant horror.
"It was done for you--for love of you, Alexis."
"Love has no kin with murder," I exclaimed, bitterly.
"Your life is mine, remember," she answered, firmly. Her determination
and strength were inexhaustible. "This makes you ten thousand times
more surely mine than ever. I told you you were the cause--and also,
that you could be made to bear the brunt. Listen! You know well
enough what chance a Nihilist has on whom the fangs of suspicion have
fastened. You are a Nihilist. Your sister is one also. I know this.
Well, what chance, think you, would that Nihilist have of his life
whose dagger it was that found its way between my husband's ribs. What
then, if I had found the sheath of it and secreted it to save the man?
Suppose too, that I had kept back the discovery because of my guilty
love for him. And further that he had come at the time to tempt my
honour and that he was leaving the house when my husband, roused by the
noise I made, met him; and that I saw the deed done?" She paused and
changed her tone to one of fierce directness, as she continued:--"The
dagger that killed Christian Tueski is your own weapon, known by its
sheath to a hundred people: and that sheath, with your name on it, is
in my possession. What chance of life would there be for you and yours
if these things were made known. Now, do you wish to go?"
A hot and passionate reply rose to my lips, but was checked before
uttered. I thought of Olga, and I knew that every word this woman said
was true--that no power in Russia could save my life or Olga's liberty
if the tale were told now.
Delay I must have at any cost. Time in which to meet this woman's
horrible cunning and daring plot. If I had hated her before, she was
now loathsome; while the fears she had stirred on Olga's account
intensified and embittered a thousandfold my resentment. Yet hateful
as the task was, I was prepared to continue my part with her.
"You think this love?" I said, after a pause in which she had been
waiting breathlessly for me to speak. "Do women love the men they hold
to them by the tether rope of threats?"
"Do women kill for the sake of men they do not love?"
"Do you think to keep my love by threatening me with death?"
"Have I not inflicted death to keep you? Why do you wish to bandy
phrases? My deeds speak for themselves. They shew you well enough
what I will dare to keep you true to me. You are mine, Alexis, and no
power shall ever part us. I have told you this often before. It was
you who sought me, who proffered me your love, who poured on me your
caresses and roused the love in me, and roused it never to cease. Do
you think me a silly simple fool to be wooed and won and, when
deserted, willing to do no more than wring my feeble hands and shed
silly tears, and prate and maunder between my stupid sobs, that my
heart is broken and that I fain would die--Bah! I am not of that sort.
I am a woman who can will and act, and fashion my own ends in my own
way. It is not the stream that carries me, but I who turn the stream
even though it be mingled with blood. No, no. If you play me false,
Alexis, it is you, and not I, who shall die because my heart is broken."
She shewed this determination in every line of her beautiful face and
movement of her magnificent figure, as she stood before me a lovely
hateful type of a vengeful woman. She changed her mood, however, with
astonishing suddenness and turned all softness and tenderness.
"But under all this lies my love," she said. "It was love drove me to
everything. Your pledge, too, that made me feel, as nothing else could
have done, the wall of separation between us while he lived; and my
love could not endure it. Ah, how I love you!" and then in words
burning with the fever of passion, she spoke of her love for me,
lingering over the terms as if the mere utterance of them were an
ecstatic delight. She laid all to the account of this love, and then
went on to name her terms--that I must marry her.
While she was speaking, I was thinking; trying to see some flaw in the
devilish coil she had spread round me. But I could see none. Time
might find a way: but even time she grudged, and did not mean to give.
"But we can't be married now at the moment when your husband is
scarcely lying cold in his grave," I said, aghast at her cold-blooded
proposition. "Every man and woman in Moscow would immediately think we
had murdered him together in order to marry."
"Every man and woman will not know," she answered calmly. "Do you
think there is no such thing as a secret marriage possible in this Holy
Russia of ours, or that gold cannot buy silence here just as anywhere
else in the world?"
"I know that a secret marriage under these circumstances would put the
lives of us both into the keeping of anyone who knew of it, however
well you paid them. The more you paid, indeed, the more certain the
inference."
"I care nothing for that; nor will you if you love me as you have often
sworn you do." She uttered this with the energy and passion which
always were shewn when she was crossed. But in this I was naturally as
resolute as she.
"I will not do it," I said very firmly. "Understand me. I will not do
it. It is nothing to do with love in any way at all: but simply
self-protection. It would be sheer suicide, and that I can do much
more simply in other ways. I refuse absolutely to put both our lives
into the keeping of any man in Russia, however holy and however well
bribed. When we are married, it must be openly, in the light of day
and before men's faces; and that most certainly cannot be until all
this excitement about your husband's death has died down, and the
marriage can take place without causing suspicion. That must be at
least six months hence--and probably a year or even two years."
"I won't wait," she cried instantly and angrily. "You want to break
with me. I am no fool."
"As you will. Then instead of marrying me you can denounce me and come
and see me beheaded or strangled. If you threaten me much longer," I
said bitterly, "you will make me prefer one of the latter fates."
She bent close to me, trying to read my thoughts.
"And meanwhile?" she asked,
"Are you such a mad woman that you would have us placard the walls of
the city with our secrets? Haven't we all Russia to hoodwink? Do you
suppose your police agents and secret agents are all fools, to see
nothing, think nothing, infer nothing? It may be hard for us to be
apart, but what else is possible? Even this visit is fool-hardiness
itself and may set a thousand tongues clacking. Heaven knows, if ever
a pair of lovers had need of caution we have now! Have you dared so
much for our marriage only to toss it all away now just for the lack of
a little self-control? We must see very little of one another. That
is the only possible course."
"I'll not consent," she cried again, vehemently, and broke out into a
fresh storm of protests and reproaches. But I held to my decision,
confident that she would see she must give way.
We parted without coming to any definite decision; and I was glad,
because it spared me the infliction of those outward signs of affection
in which she delighted to indulge and which now would have been more
than ever repulsive.
But the knowledge of the increased peril and embarrassment overwhelmed
me with a feeling of anxious doubt and most painful and galling
impotence.