IN THE PRINCESS’S BED-CHAMBER
A few more words passed and then Wilfrid, with a glance at his watch,
opined that it was high time for him to go to bed.
“Will you show the gospodin to his room, Nadia?” said the innkeeper.
“He had better pull off those heavy boots first,” suggested the girl.
And Wilfrid, knowing her reason, good-humouredly complied.
“And you’ll not get up till after ten?” pleaded Boris. “The boyarine must
not know that I have broken my word. And I must keep your yamchik out of
the way till she has taken her departure.”
“Very good. To please you I’ll prolong my slumbers,” assented Wilfrid,
“though I confess I should like to have a peep at the fair boyarine.” And
bidding the innkeeper “good-night,” Wilfrid followed Nadia, who led the
way with lighted lamp.
“Tread softly,” she said with a subdued laugh. “Don’t disturb the repose
of the Ugly One, whatever you do. So savage-looking is he that he’ll
think nothing of running you through the body with his long sword if he
should be waked before his time.”
Mindful more of the boyarine than of the Ugly One, Wilfrid stepped with
noiseless tread.
“Your room,” said Nadia, as they ascended a staircase, “is exactly over
the boyarine’s bed-chamber, so you must move about as silently as a
ghost.”
Conversing thus in whispers she turned down the corridor that led from
the second landing.
“This is your room,” she said, pausing before a closed door.
Wilfrid, taking the lamp from her hand, wished her “good night.”
“The last Englishman parted from me very differently.” There was no
mistaking the saucy invitation of her eye and lip. Pretty faces were
made to be kissed, and Wilfrid did what any other sensible fellow would
have done similarly situated, in which pleasing business the lamp became
accidentally extinguished.
“There now! You yourself must re-light it,” she said, thrusting a
tinder-box into his hand. “I cannot stay longer,” and pushing him into
the room, she closed the door upon him and hurried away.
Wilfrid’s first act on finding himself alone was to lock the door, his
practice always at a strange inn; his next, the room being in total
darkness, was to obtain a light, a somewhat difficult feat, owing to the
dampness of the rag in the tinder-box. Not till after the lapse of ten
minutes did he succeed in producing a flame sufficient for the rekindling
of the lamp.
While kneeling on the floor at this task he more than once fancied that
he caught a sound like a sigh, and at the moment of obtaining the light
he became convinced of the reality of the sounds.
A regular succession of light breathings gave audible proof that he was
not the only person in the room. Rising to his feet and holding the lamp
on high, Wilfrid looked about him, and discovered that the breathings
came from a bed a little distance off. Curtains hanging around the bed
prevented him from seeing the sleeper. It was clear that through some
strange blunder Nadia had shown him to the wrong room.
Then——
“By Jove!” muttered Wilfrid.
His eyes had fallen upon a startling sight—startling, that is, in the
sense of being unexpected.
There, orderly disposed upon a chair by the dressing-table was a pile of
fair undergarments, while beneath the same chair there peeped forth a
pair of satin shoes formed only for the smallest of feet.
[Illustration: RISING TO HIS FEET AND HOLDING THE LAMP ON HIGH, WILFRID
LOOKED ABOUT HIM.
“_By Neva’s Waters._”
_Page 34._]
The person behind the curtains was not a man!
Fortunately Wilfrid’s movements had been so noiseless as not to disturb
the occupant. His obvious course, then, was immediate retirement.
He was on the point of stealing off when his eye was caught by sparkles
of light coming from a jewel-case that lay upon the dressing-table. It
did not require the knowledge of a lapidary to pronounce that the rich
gems and the wrought gold represented a very large amount of money. The
owner was, obviously a lady of wealth, and—Shrine of Venus!—there could
not be a doubt about it; he was standing in the very bed-chamber of the
fair boyarine!
Nadia, paying too much attention, perhaps, to Wilfrid’s talking, had not
noticed that instead of ascending to the _third_ landing and taking the
corridor that led from that, she had mistakenly stopped and turned when
upon the _second_ landing, with the result that Wilfrid, instead of being
in the room immediately above that of the boyarine, was in the boyarine’s
room itself!
“What would the Ugly One with the spurs and moustaches think,” muttered
Wilfrid grimly, “if he knew of my presence here?”
The sooner he withdrew the better. He had already been in the room more
than ten minutes. If Nadia should recall her error, and should come
flying back with clamour, the issue might be awkward, both for the lady
and himself.
Just as he was about to make for the door his ear detected a movement in
the bed.
His heart almost leaped to his throat. Some instinct told him that the
movement was not an unconscious stirring in slumber; the lady was wide
awake, and remembering that she had gone to sleep in the dark, was
doubtless puzzling herself to account for the light now shining through
her bed-curtains.
His first impulse, to extinguish the light, was checked by the thought
that the fear occasioned by the sudden darkness might elicit a scream
from her. Better to stand still and be openly seen than to glide, a
terrifying black shape, from the room.
A glance toward the bed showed him a hand coming forth from between the
curtains—a hand as white as the sleeve of the nightdress that clothed the
arm of the wearer.
The drapery parted, revealing a beautiful face and figure—the living
original of the miniature!
Overwhelmed with surprise Wilfrid stood, as breathless and as still as if
he had suddenly fallen under a spell of enchantment.
He had loved her from the first moment of setting eyes upon her portrait,
but now the actual sight of the living princess increased that love
tenfold. Could it be true that he, and he only, held a place in her
heart, and that for a space of more than eight years? If eight years
previously in Saxony he had exercised so powerful an impression upon her
girlish imagination, she should surely know him again? But though he
hoped and looked for it, she betrayed no sign of recognition. Indeed, the
only emotion expressed in her widening eyes was wonder.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
Her voice—and one more soft and musical had never fallen upon Wilfrid’s
ear—seemed to have the effect of breaking the spell that had held him.
He bowed with all the grace he was capable of.
“I am an English traveller, a midnight arrival, who has been erroneously
led to believe that this was his bedroom. I cannot sufficiently express
my regret at having disturbed you in this unceremonious fashion.”
There was about Wilfrid that air of good breeding that marked him as a
gentleman, and gave to his words the stamp of truth.
Her suspicions, if she had had any, were gone in a moment.
“Then, sir, please to withdraw,” she said, in a tone of gentle dignity.
“At once,” replied Wilfrid, turning to the door, “trusting I may be
permitted to pay my respects to you in the morning, and to apologise more
at length.”
Just the faintest shade of fear passed over her face.
“No, no, you must not do that! As you love your life keep this meeting a
secret! I speak with good reason. Go! But stay—one moment. Your name?”
“Wilfrid, Lord Courtenay.”
A faint cry escaped the Princess as Wilfrid so held the lamp that its
light fell clearly upon his face.
She knew at least his name, if she did not recognise him; that much was
certain. Equally certain was it that his name or his presence filled her
with some deep emotion. She caught her breath; her colour came and went.
If these symptoms were due to love it was a love mingled with dismay, and
the dismay seemed to predominate.
Though prudence told Wilfrid that it was high time to go, he could not
resist the temptation of lingering to ask,
“Have we met before?”
“Once,” answered the Princess in a softened voice, “and once only, when
you saved me from death!”
It must have been in his sleep, then, for he had no recollection of it!
Adventures he had known in plenty, but to save the life of either woman
or girl was a pleasure that had never yet fallen to his lot, and he said
so.
The Princess gave a half-smile.
“It was an event so strange that I do not wonder at your failing to
connect me with it.”
A more puzzling statement, this, since the very strangeness of the affair
should surely be an additional reason for stamping it upon his memory.
As Wilfrid looked intently at her in the vain attempt to discover her
meaning, he saw an awful change pass over her face. Dilated eyes, lips
drawn apart, and cheeks perfectly bloodless—all showed her to be seized
by a sudden sense of fear.
A moment more and Wilfrid, too, felt fear, not on his own account, but on
hers.
A murmuring of voices and the sound of footsteps were audible on the
other side of the bedroom door. A little crowd was congregating in the
corridor without. What was the cause of the gathering? His striking
of the flint had been accompanied by very little noise. The voices
of both the Princess and himself had been scarcely loud enough to
penetrate beyond the room. Why, then, was attention becoming drawn to
the Princess’s bed-chamber? Had Nadia become aware of her error? Was
she outside, testifying to others that she had mistakenly conducted an
English traveller to this chamber? Had the Princess’s retinue gone to
the bedroom intended as his and found it empty? Had they then decided to
search the Princess’s bed-chamber? The discovery of a man at the dead
of night in the bedroom of a lady, who had let fifteen minutes elapse
without raising an alarm, would certainly place her in a compromising
situation.
The confused murmur outside ceased. Then came a gentle tapping upon the
panels of the door.
Now if Wilfrid had followed his own impulse he would at once have opened
the door, and explained the matter precisely as it had happened, being of
opinion that the truthful way is always the best way, but on glancing at
the Princess he saw her with her finger upon her lips, which action he
took as a sign that he was not to speak.
In the silence of that trying moment he could almost hear the beating of
her heart.
The knocking was renewed, being followed this time by a turning of the
handle and a pressure against the door, which did not yield since, as
previously stated, Wilfrid upon entering had locked it.
“What is it?” cried the Princess, striving to subdue the tremors of her
voice.
“Did not your highness call us?” was the reply, delivered in a deep
bass voice, which Wilfrid immediately recognised to be that of Prince
Ouvaroff, or, as Nadia had impolitely called him, the Ugly One.
The voice came both as a surprise and a pleasure to Wilfrid—a pleasure,
because his present position would now admit an explanation, certain
to be received by the Prince, who would not be likely to impute
dishonourable motives to his old friend. Indeed, Wilfrid was almost on
the point of answering, but thought it more prudent to await the pleasure
of the Princess.
“I did not call, Prince. I would have rung had I wanted anything.”
Wilfrid groaned in spirit. The deed was done. If the Princess were not
compromised before she certainly was now, and by her own action. Her
words were tantamount to saying that nothing unusual was occurring—in
effect, a tacit denial of his presence.
“But had you rung we could not have come to you,” said a feminine voice,
belonging evidently to one of the Princess’s maids, “since your Highness
has locked the door against us.”
“A wise precaution in a strange house. I did not call, nor do I want
anything. Return to bed, silly ones. You—you are interrupting my rest.”
There was a brief whispering, followed by the sound of receding
footsteps, and though all became silent in the corridor again, Wilfrid
was troubled with the horrible suspicion that the speakers had merely
moved off to some distant place of observation, there to wait for his
appearing. If so, how was it possible for him to escape discovery?
The only other exit from the room lay through the window, but Wilfrid
was well aware that Russian windows are, at the beginning of winter, so
firmly secured against the cold without as to be opened with extreme
difficulty. Moreover, if he should succeed in crawling through the
lattice and in dropping to the ground below—honourable doings for a
Courtenay!—his footprints in the snow would betray him. And how was he to
re-enter the inn without attracting notice? It was impossible for him to
remain all night in the bed-chamber, even if the Princess, yielding to
necessity, should permit it, for in the morning discovery must ensue upon
the entering of the maids. He could leave only by the door, but again
came the disquieting thought that there might be watchers in the corridor
without, determined to see the end of the matter, even though they should
have to wait all night. If this last were the case, then each moment of
his stay would but deepen—nay, confirm—suspicion.
He was still standing in the place where he had first stood after
lighting the lamp, hesitating to stir lest the moving of the light or
the sound of his feet should lead to his betrayal. But now the Princess
beckoned him to approach. She wished to speak, and for obvious reasons
to speak in a whisper. Wilfrid moved forward in silence. The Princess
pointed to a chair by the bedside, and Wilfrid, sitting down, placed the
lamp upon the dressing-table, and bent his head to listen.
What the Princess said was almost inaudible to Wilfrid: it was more by
the motion of her lips than by the actual sound proceeding from them that
he understood her to say:—
“I said what I did”—alluding to her implied denial of his presence,
surely a pardonable evasion considering the circumstances—“to save you
from being cut to pieces before my eyes—your fate if found here. Do not
go—till—till they have had time to fall asleep again.”
With that she sank back upon her pillow.
To be sitting by the bedside of a fair and youthful princess was a very
charming situation, but it had its drawbacks. Should discovery ensue,
then, unless the Princess had the nature of an angel, how could she ever
forgive the man who had made her innocence appear as guilt? From her,
whose love he was so anxious to win, what could he now look for but
resentment? The endearing impression made on her mind by his saving of
her life, though confessedly he had no recollection of the event, would
now be completely effaced by this unfortunate blundering into the wrong
room at night.
As Baranoff’s face, with its sneering smile, rose vividly before him,
Wilfrid turned cold at the thought that he had done the very thing the
minister had wanted him to do! Should this affair come to his ears how he
would triumph in the Princess’s shame! How quick he would be to reveal
it to the world! Wilfrid recalled his words: “Death at the hands of the
State for the Princess as well as for her lover.” That there was truth
in this utterance seemed evidenced by the words of the Princess herself;
that he would be slain before her eyes if found in her bed-chamber. Such
a fear spoke but too plainly of her position, for if she were powerless
to prevent her retinue from butchering him, it was clear that she was not
really their mistress. She was, in fact, a sort of honourable prisoner
of State, free to travel if she chose, but attended by an escort, told
off to watch for any suspicious act. In forecasting his probable doom she
had not touched upon her own. Was it possible that he was really bringing
upon her a like fate?
He ventured to steal a glance at her face. How beautiful it was, with
its soft violet eyes shaded by long dark lashes? Whatever may have been
the arrangement of her hair earlier in the evening, it now lay upon the
pillow like a bright aureole around her face, one golden tress twining
about her white throat like a vine tendril clasping a marble column.
If ever woman had cause to be angry with Wilfrid that woman was this
princess, and yet her face betrayed not the faintest sign of resentment;
on the contrary, there was something in her look assuring him that, come
what might, she would be the last person in the world to reproach him for
an act unwittingly committed, a forgiving tenderness of spirit on her
part that, while it endeared her the more to Wilfrid, at the same time
enhanced, rather than lessened, his despair.
Half an hour passed without a word spoken on either side. Then the
Princess bent forward till her golden hair was so close to his own that
he could feel her warm breath on his cheek.
“Lord Courtenay,” she said in the faintest of whispers, “before you go, a
few words. You have heard me called ‘Highness.’ Do you know my name and
rank?”
“I regret to answer no,” replied Wilfrid, speaking in a tone similarly
subdued.
As she did not seek to enlighten him it was clear that she preferred to
remain unknown.
“You will keep this meeting a secret?”
Wilfrid bowed assent.
“When you have found the right room let me entreat you to remain there
till after ten in the morning.”
Ten o’clock, he remembered, was the time arranged for the resumption of
her journey.
“My meaning is that if a certain one among my suite should learn that
you have passed a night at this inn, the consequences to me may be,” she
hesitated as to the choice of a word, finally selecting “hurtful.”
Wilfrid had no doubt that the person she meant was Ouvaroff, and for the
moment he felt that he would like to do for Ouvaroff what he had done for
the Abbé Spada.
“Your Highness, say no more. I stir not from my room till after the hour
named.”
“What other persons besides myself know that you are here?”
“The innkeeper and his daughter, but for their own sake they will not
speak of me to your suite. There is my yamchik, too, but they will take
good care to keep him out of the way.”
Though the Princess had hinted that it was time for him to go, she did
not seek to hasten his departure.
“Why do you, an Englishman, travel in Russia at a time so perilous as the
present?” An embarrassing question, but before he had time to consider
what answer he should give, the Princess spoke again.
“Lord Courtenay,” she said in a grave earnest tone, “I am glad in one
sense to have met you, for I can give you a warning. It has become known
to me that your life is not safe in Russia. Leave the country with all
speed. Take another name; assume a disguise; forge a fresh passport; go
anywhere rather than to St. Petersburg, where you have an enemy who will
not spare you.”
“You allude to Count Baranoff?”
“To one greater than Baranoff.”
But when Wilfrid asked for the name of this person, the Princess shrank
back with a strange and troubled look, so that Wilfrid refrained from
repeating the question, for he could very well guess who was meant,
though why she should hesitate at naming him was a mystery.
One greater than Baranoff? Who but the Czar could be greater than the
Czar’s minister? And the cause of the Czar’s enmity was doubtless to be
found in the defeat at Berlin of his policy, a defeat due to Wilfrid
alone. And yet it seemed improbable that Baranoff would have the courage
to tell the story of his own cowardice and flight. It might be, however,
that he had related the matter in such a way as to exculpate himself,
representing that his triumph would have been certain but for a secret
emissary of Pitt’s, Lord Courtenay by name, who, insinuating himself into
the confidences of Frederick William, had induced that monarch to side
with Great Britain.
The warning given by the Princess more than ever convinced Wilfrid that
his journey to St. Petersburg was likely to end in his arrest. Yet turn
back he would not, now that he had once met with the Princess, whose
whole manner showed that she moved in an environment of suspicion and
peril, from which, if possible, he would deliver her.
“You will not go to St. Petersburg?” she said in a soft pleading tone
that vibrated to his heart.
Wilfrid felt that to say he was bent on going would but increase the look
of sadness on her fair face. He therefore temporised.
“I will think over the matter.”
“I have warned you. If you will not take my warning you are lost. I have
no more to say,” she added—words that Wilfrid interpreted as a hint to go.
“Your Highness,” he said, rising, “you know my name. Will you not favour
me with yours ere I go?”
She shook her bright flowing hair in tantalising fashion.
“What good will it do you?” she said with a sad smile. “Let me remain
unknown. Now go, and Heaven watch over you!”
“And over you, too, Princess!”
Wilfrid bowed, took up the lamp, and walked to the door. Arrived there,
he cast one last lingering glance at the Princess. She was sitting up
in bed watching him, her hand pressed to her side as if to repress the
accelerated beating of her heart. Was its quickening due to fear, or to
love, or to a mingling of both?
He extinguished his lamp, conscious that even in the darkness the
Princess’s eyes were upon him.
He cautiously turned the key of the door, the steel tongue of the lock
moved back almost silently. Wilfrid paused a few moments, fearing lest
the sound, faint though it was, should have attracted attention.
Finding that all remained still, he ventured to open the door and to
look forth. By aid of a faint light shed by a lamp hung from the ceiling,
he saw that the corridor was empty. His trained hearing caught neither
the hasty movement of feet nor the sound of closing doors; nothing
whatever occurred to suggest that any of the Princess’s retinue had been
on the watch.
Thus assured, he stepped out into the passage, quietly closing the door
behind him.
It was a new thing for Wilfrid to be stealing along a corridor at night
like a thief, fearful of being seen or heard—an altogether humiliating
experience, made endurable only by the thought that it was necessary for
the honour, the safety, perhaps even the life, of the Princess. Twenty
paces—he had a reason for taking accurate measurement—brought him to a
landing, whence a short staircase led to the floor above, where was a
corridor, similar in all respects to the one he had just left.
Moving forward twenty paces along this, Wilfrid paused before a certain
door.
“Directly above the Princess’s room, Nadia said. Then this should be it.
Now, pray Heaven, I am not disturbing some other person’s sleep.”
He cautiously opened the door, and quietly exploring his way through the
darkness, reached the bed. It was empty. Re-lighting the lamp he found
himself in a room whose appointments seemed to show that it was intended
for the use of a male visitor.
Whether or not it was the room that Nadia had meant for him mattered
little; he was not going to look for any other; so locking the door he
went to bed, and was soon sound asleep.