A DOCUMENT MISSING
While Wilfrid was thinking that if Pauline’s ways with Ouvaroff were as
fascinating as her ways with him, it was no wonder that the poor Prince’s
head was turned, the maid Vera, who had gone off on some errand for her
mistress, now re-entered, bearing a salver, upon which lay two name-cards.
“Visitors, my lady.”
Just the trace of a frown appeared upon Pauline’s face as she took the
cards in her hand. Wilfrid’s society was much more interesting than
that of Count Baranoff and General Benningsen. She was on the point of
feigning some excuse for not receiving them when Vera remarked,
“They say they have startling news.”
“In that case I’d better see them.”
And bidding Wilfrid excuse her absence for a short time she descended to
that same entrance-hall in which she had held her first interview with
him.
Baranoff and Benningsen had met by chance upon the steps of the Embassy,
each bringing the same piece of news, the Count intending to communicate
it to the Ambassador, the General to Pauline.
Though apprised of Wilfrid’s arrival, Baranoff knew nothing whatever of
his arrest and escape, and it was only in the interval of waiting that he
heard the story from Benningsen. The news filled the Count with secret
rage. Hitherto hating Pauline a little, he now began to hate her more. To
think that but for her he might this night have had Wilfrid a prisoner
in the Citadel, subjecting him to insult and degradation! Instead of
which Wilfrid had now found powerful champions in the Ambassador and his
daughter!
Mingled with Baranoff’s ire was a high degree of fear. Self-interest had
prompted him to withhold from Paul the reason of his failure at Berlin,
and in thus hoodwinking the Czar he had committed a kind of treason. Now
should Wilfrid have given Pauline the correct version of that affair, it
would perhaps go the round of St. Petersburg society, bringing upon him
ridicule and mortification, to say nothing of dismissal from office—or
worse, should the matter reach the ears of the Czar.
Had he not sent in his card to the Ambassador’s daughter, he would now
have retreated. A coward at heart, he glanced apprehensively at the door
by which Pauline would enter. Supposing she should appear in company with
Wilfrid, and he with taunting tongue should renew the challenge! Outside
the Embassy Baranoff was a great man, a man to be feared, a man who, with
a few strokes of his pen, could send an opponent to Siberia; but his
power stopped at the door of the Embassy; inside it he was helpless, and
no match for the mocking Baroness and the devil-may-care Englishman.
It was a relief to him when Pauline entered alone.
Pauline had no great liking for the coarse burly Benningsen, but was
compelled by parity of political interests to keep on friendly terms with
him.
Far different was the case with Baranoff: him she loathed, as every pure
woman was bound to loathe the ex-lover of the dissolute Catharine. It
always cost Pauline an effort to treat him with ordinary civility.
“Aha, Baroness!” cried Benningsen. “What is this you’ve been doing?
Rescuing in broad daylight a prisoner of the Czar, and whisking him into
the Embassy. By Heaven, you’re a bold one!”
“And you’re not,” replied Pauline, whose habit it was to speak her mind
freely to the General, who was accustomed to speak freely to her. “I
marked you, running from the face of Paul, putting life before honour.”
“Faith, my dear!” said he with a grin, and not a whit abashed by her
reproach, “honour, when lost, may be recovered; one’s life, never.”
“You come with news, I understand?”
“Unpleasant news,” returned Baranoff, affecting a mournful air, in
reality secretly delighted, as knowing that the tidings would alarm her.
“Unpleasant news I regret to——”
“Hold! the Baroness must pay toll for our tidings. Toll,” added
Benningsen, significantly. “You know what I want.”
“I do, but unfortunately the knout is not here, but at the Citadel. The
Count will be but too pleased to accommodate you.”
The jest was a true one. Nothing would have pleased Baranoff more than
to see Benningsen tied up to the knouting-post. Baranoff gloried in the
fact that it was he, and he alone, that had persuaded Paul to make war
with England. Benningsen was sneeringly confident that the Count would be
the first to sign a peace as soon as ever the British fleet appeared in
Finland waters.
“Toll!” repeated Benningsen. “A bottle of—what shall it be? Who was it
that said, ‘Port for boys, claret for men, brandy for heroes’?”
“Louis, a bottle of port for the General,” said Pauline sweetly.
“Ach! but you’re down on me to-night,” grinned Benningsen.
However, the bottle when brought, was labelled cognac.
“A corkscrew? No,” said Benningsen, staying the hand of the servitor. And
drawing his sabre, with one stroke he cut clean through the neck of the
bottle, sending the glass fragments flying to the other end of the salon.
“That’s the way we do it in camp.”
The liqueur being poured out and watered to taste, Baranoff ventured to
drink to the fair Pauline.
“You are guilty of treason,” said she. “You know that Little Paul claims
the first toast.”
“O, damn Little Paul!” cried Benningsen savagely, and speaking with a
recklessness that led Pauline to wonder whether he had not been taking
brandy at other places besides the Embassy. “Little! Humph, that’s true,
but what there is of him is quite enough! Damn the powers that be!
Here’s to the powers that will be, eh?” he added, raising his glass with
a significant wink at Pauline, who tried by a warning frown to check the
license of his tongue.
“Your tidings?” she asked.
“The English consols are going up, and the Russian are going down,”
answered the General.
“’Tis very like, thanks to the Count,” said Pauline, “but you didn’t come
here merely to tell me that.”
“No. What think you is Little Paul’s latest craze? You’ll never guess, so
I’ll tell you. This afternoon he put the Czarovitch under arrest!”
“Our little Sasha!” faltered Pauline, with concern in her looks.
“Ay, our little Sasha!” repeated Benningsen. “And Constantine also. Both
brothers are prisoners, each in his own apartment. To-morrow they are to
be sent to a fortress.”
“And _mon père_ has just gone to the Michaelhof to have an interview with
Alexander.”
“Faith, then, he’ll return without it!”
Alas for Pauline’s hope of obtaining pardon for Wilfrid and herself
through the mediation of Alexander! Her father’s errand to the palace was
like to end in failure.
Matters began to wear a serious look. Having done a deed certain to
incense the Czar, she durst not leave the Embassy for fear of arrest. And
what would happen to her father if he should defy the Czar’s command to
surrender Lord Courtenay?
“What have the two youths done, or rather what does Paul say they have
done?”
“No one knows his reason,” said Benningsen. “But this is what he said on
giving orders for their arrest, ‘Before many days be past men will be
astonished to see heads fall that once were very dear to me.’ It’s my
belief he’ll keep his word,” continued the General. “He has a craze for
imitating his great-grandfather, Peter. And Peter put _his_ son to death,
you know.”
Pauline’s look of concern deepened.
“Let the Russians reproach Paris for its Reign of Terror,” she said. “It
was but a brief season. But at St. Petersburg life has now become one
long reign of terror. One rises from bed of a morning with no certainty
of returning to it at night. Our lives are made miserable by a series of
vexatious edicts. Our commerce is destroyed; the national credit sinking;
the treasury empty. Wars on all sides; Cossacks assembling at Astrakhan
for an overland march to India; troops massing upon the Prussian frontier
to compel King Frederick to join the Armed Neutrality. And ere long we
shall have a foe in the Baltic, for I presume,” she added, turning to
Baranoff, “the report is true that Nelson’s fleet has set sail.”
The Count, with a sour look, opined that it was correct.
“Then with the breaking-up of the ice will come the bombardment of
Cronstadt.”
“Thousand devils!” cried Benningsen, “and I’ve just bought a villa at
Oranienbaum. Right in the line of fire. Thirty thousand roubles clean
thrown away! Count, this war is of your creation. Undo your work.
Persuade Paul to make peace. This morning’s text ought to dispose him to
it.”
“Text?” said Pauline inquiringly.
“Text!” repeated Benningsen. “His latest craze is to turn the Bible into
a book of holy divination. Each morning he opens the Scriptures, and
the first verse his eye lights upon is taken as a direct message from
Heaven. To-day’s text was, ‘_Thou shalt bruise his heel_.’ Not quite
seeing its application to himself straight he goes with the verse to
Archbishop Plato. ‘The passage, Sire, is to be taken in connection with
the preceding clause, “_It shall bruise thy head_.” The head is a vital
part; not so the heel. The meaning, therefore, is that your enemies, the
English, will do you more hurt than you will do them.’”
“Trust Plato for making the Scriptures speak his own views,” said
Baranoff with a sneer.
“The text,” continued Benningsen, ignoring the Count’s remark, “has made
our little Czar thoughtful. All day long he has been saying at intervals,
‘_Thou shalt bruise his heel_,’ so that—but here comes Monsieur
l’Ambassadeur,” he said, breaking off in the middle of a sentence. “Now,
perhaps,” he whispered in Pauline’s ear, “I shall be able to have a word
with you on—start not—on a matter touching our personal safety.”
The Marquis de Vaucluse had entered the reception-hall wearing a
perturbed look, due to the discovery that the Czarovitch was a close
prisoner in his own apartments, and forbidden to hold any communication
with the outside world.
For a few moments the four discussed in common this latest phase of
Imperial politics, and then Baranoff, desirous of conversing privately
with De Vaucluse, drew him on one side, leaving Benningsen free to talk
with Pauline.
“How long, think you,” said Baranoff to the Marquis, “shall we be able to
keep the Czar alive?”
De Vaucluse, not understanding the other’s meaning, regarded him with a
startled look.
“I am alluding, dear citoyen, to the privately-expressed opinion of
Paul’s chief physician, Wylie.”
The Ambassador’s brow cleared. He had thought the other was about to
announce the existence of a conspiracy for the assassination of the Czar.
“Physicians’ forecasts are not always right. What has the Scotsman been
saying?”
“Paul has had of late several strokes of apoplexy, each one more serious
than the last. In Wylie’s opinion the next is likely to prove fatal. Now,
neither you nor I can afford to see Paul go, for Alexander’s accession
will mean the end of the Franco-Russian Alliance.”
This was a fact as well-known to the Marquis as it was to Baranoff.
“Any undue excitement,” continued the Count, “any undue rage will carry
him off.”
“The remedy is obvious,” smiled De Vaucluse. “His immediate _entourage_
must take every precaution to prevent him from exciting himself.”
“That is very good counsel of yours,” said Baranoff in a dry tone, “but,
unfortunately, your charming but too generously-impulsive daughter has
this day done a deed likely to raise the Czar’s wrath to a dangerous
point.”
“And, therefore,” said the Marquis, “he must be kept in ignorance of
Pauline’s act.”
“But when he demands his prisoner in the morning—what then?”
“Why, then, it will be advisable for you, the Governor of the Citadel, to
take upon yourself to affirm that the prisoner died during the night.”
De Vaucluse, being a diplomat, had no more scruple in suggesting a lie
to Baranoff than Baranoff, in other circumstances, would have had in
adopting it.
“It seems to me, Monsieur l’Ambassadeur,” said the Count loftily, “that
you are neglecting the safest way out of the difficulty.”
“And that is——?”
“To surrender the person of Lord Courtenay to be taken to the
Petropaulovski Fortress in accordance with the Czar’s wish.”
“I should be most happy to meet your suggestion, dear Count, were it not
for one little circumstance.”
“Ah!”
“I have pledged my word of honour to Lord Courtenay that I would not
surrender him.”
The Ambassador’s manner plainly showed that he meant what he said, and
that further arguments directed against his decision would be so much
wasted breath.
“Of course Monsieur l’Ambassadeur would not talk thus unless he were
sure that his action will have the approval of the First Consul?”
Baranoff’s smile was not that of a friend. It was a sudden revelation to
the Marquis, showing how sinister the Count could be when crossed in his
purpose. “You will mention this matter in your next despatch to him, eh?”
“This man means mischief,” thought De Vaucluse. “He will take care that
General Bonaparte hears of this matter. And then——?”
The Ambassador did not like to think of the “then.” Never before in his
diplomatic career had he been in such a strait as the present, and all
due to that wayward Pauline! He glanced somewhat darkly at his daughter,
little thinking that at that moment she had far greater grounds for
uneasiness than he had.
“General, you are drunk!” had been her frank utterance to Benningsen as
soon as she had found opportunity to converse with him privately.
“Heigh-ho! I wish I were,” replied the warrior.
“You must be, or you would never, in the presence of Baranoff, have drunk
to the powers that will be.”
“Pooh! what matters?”
“Much. He’ll be guessing our secret. He’s mean enough to report your
words to Paul. Do you want to be sent into exile a second time?”
“It’s a case of exile for all patriots, I’m thinking. I leave the city
to-night. By the waters of Finland I’ll sit down and weep when I remember
thee, O Petropolis, for I shall have to leave all behind me, including my
villa at Oranienbaum. I’m glad it isn’t paid for.”
“Speak more clearly, General,” said Pauline looking startled.
“Humph, haven’t I spoken clearly enough? Cannot you guess why little
Sasha has been put under arrest?”
She understood clearly now, and drew a deep breath, born of fear.
“Paul has discovered——?”
“I fear so.”
There followed a significant silence, during which both sat looking at
each other.
“Who has betrayed us?” she said at last.
“No one. It was an accident. You know—you have reason for knowing—that
there is in existence a weighty document containing the autograph
signatures of those who have pledged themselves to——”
She interrupted him with a gesture of impatience.
“Why tell me what I know already?”
“Our dear friend, Count Pahlen,” continued Benningsen, naming the
Foreign Minister, next to the Czar the most powerful man in the Empire,
“was the person to whom we all agreed to entrust our common document, a
document so precious that he durst not keep it at his bureau, locked in
an escritoire, lest it should be detected by some prying secretary. He
therefore carried it about on his person.”
“An unwise thing to do.”
“So it has proved, for he has lost our great charter.”
“Lost it!” said Pauline in dismay.
“It was on his person at one o’clock; at two it was gone. Either he
dropped it, or it was stolen from him. The question for us is—Into whose
hands has it fallen? It may have been picked up by some mujik, who, too
ignorant to read and therefore unable to appreciate its value, may use
it to light his pipe. Some one, not over friendly to Paul’s rule, may
have found it, in which case he may hand over the document to one of the
signatories occurring therein, or, at the least, he may keep a silent
tongue on the matter. But I sadly fear that the document has been found,
if not by an enemy, by one at any rate who, seeing in the discovery the
prospect of a reward, has hurried with it to Paul. At all events three
hours after Pahlen’s discovery of his loss little Sasha was put under
arrest.”
“That proves nothing. Is he the only one? Why are not all the others
arrested?”
“Who knows what may be happening at this very moment? I have come to warn
you. You will do well this night to set off with me for Finland, lest in
the morning Little Paul should be found demanding your head.”
“Fly! And leave Alexander to his fate! No, I’ll not do that. Having drawn
him into a conspiracy, I’ll stand by him to the last, and, if need be,
share his doom.”
There was a brief interval of silence.
“If Paul would but die!” murmured Benningsen.
“Oh, if he would only die to-night, our necks would be safe! But then,
men never will die when they are wanted to. Look at my rich uncle now,
that——”
“Hasn’t Count Pahlen determined upon any plan of action?”
“Within an hour from now he holds a meeting at his house to consider the
state of affairs. But, mark my words, nothing will be done. All their
resolutions will end in smoke. Fear will fall upon them when they hear
that the incriminating document is in the hands of the enemy. Every man
will look to his own safety. There will be a general flight. Nay, some,
thinking to save their own necks, will voluntarily come forward to betray
their fellows. And then, what will Monsieur l’Ambassadeur think, when he
learns that his trusted daughter is a member of a conspiracy to dethrone
the Czar, and more—has made use of the Embassy as a meeting-place for the
conspirators?”