HOW PAUL DIED
The lady addressed as countess came forward with the lamp, and the little
party moved towards the ante-chamber—for such it was—Wilfrid himself
opening the door.
The Duchess, as if claiming precedence, was the first to enter, and
Wilfrid noticed that as she passed the threshold she looked downwards,
seemingly careful as to where she stepped.
Wilfrid followed. The Countess and Alexis stood by the door, and as
before, beyond earshot.
The chamber was one that had no exit save the door by which they had
entered. As in the other apartment every window had been walled up. A
plain camp bed in the middle showed that the place had been used as a
sleeping-chamber. The rest of the furniture was of the simplest kind,
quite in keeping with the bed.
“You are treading,” said the Duchess, solemnly, “where, after to-morrow,
the foot of man will never tread again.”
“Then this is——?”
“The death-chamber of the Czar Paul.”
Then did Wilfrid remember that it is a usage in the Russian Court on
the death of a Czar to wall in the windows and to seal the doors of his
private apartments, a process which, if repeatedly carried on, must in
course of time expel the living Czar from the palace of his ancestors.
“To-morrow will be too late,” had been Alexis’ argument for inducing
Wilfrid to accompany him. A true remark, if applied to the seeing of this
chamber, but wherein lay the necessity for his seeing it?
“Yes, Paul died here,” said the Duchess. “But why do I say ‘died?’ That
is not the word. Died! They do well to shut the light from this room! Let
there be perpetual darkness; it will be a fitting symbol of—of the work
done here. If these walls could speak!”
She was silent for a moment, and then turning to Wilfrid with eyes that
spoke of an inward horror, she said,
“Do you know how Paul died?”
“Your words lead me to suspect the official account that he died of
apoplexy?”
“It is false—false!” she cried with a vehemence that surprised Wilfrid.
“Paul was murdered in this very chamber—cruelly and barbarously murdered.
And they that did the deed still live. Live, do I say? They are the
Czar’s ministers, highest in the State, honoured of all men! And Paul’s
physicians are not ashamed to sign lying proclamations that he died of
apoplexy; they are posted all over the city. And editors print the story,
and people believe it—all save a few, and these dare not open their
mouths, for it is a crime against the State to speak the truth. It is
only in Russia that such things can be.”
Overcome by emotion she sank down upon a chair by the bedside. Wilfrid
thought she was going to faint, and made a sign for the Countess to come
forward. Her help, however, was not required.
“Whence did you learn this?” asked Wilfrid.
“From one who, till his dying day, will be haunted by the memory of the
deed—from Prince Ouvaroff.”
“Will not your Highness tell me the story?”
“It is the will of the Empress that you _should_ be told it.”
Wilfrid could not help wondering why Paul’s widow should honour him, of
all persons in the world, with this confidence, seeing that, only two
days before, he had given dire offence to her husband. Doubtless he would
receive an explanation ere long of a circumstance that at present was
altogether inexplicable.
Pausing for a time before she began her narrative, and often pausing
after she _had_ begun, the Duchess proceeded to describe Paul’s death,
one of the grimmest stories in the annals of Czardom.
Two nights before—to tell the tale more connectedly than it was told
by the Duchess—upon the stroke of eleven, twenty cloaked men presented
themselves at one of the gates of the palace. They were the ministers,
relatives, and friends of the Czar, among them being Count Pahlen, the
chief of the conspiracy; General Benningsen, a savage when roused to
anger; and Prince Ouvaroff, a patriot actuated by the best and purest of
motives.
The soldier on guard permitted them to pass, never suspecting that
treason lurked beneath those brilliant uniforms and the decorations that
attested rank and dignity. Once within the palace they silently ascended
to the Emperor’s apartments.
On guard before the bedroom door stood Lieutenant Voronetz. Guessing
their errand, he shouted “Treason!” and, faithful to his trust, he drew
his sabre, though well knowing that resistance meant death.
“We have no quarrel with you,” said Benningsen. “Stand aside from that
door! You will not? Well, then, if you prefer to die——”
A dozen blades were stabbing and slashing at Voronetz; his hand was hewn
off; mutilated and moaning he fell.
The door was fastened on the inside; a violent kick burst it open, and in
rushed the conspirators.
The Czar was not to be seen.
“He cannot have fled far,” said Benningsen. “His bed is still warm. Ah!
Yon screen!”
From behind the screen there stepped a little figure clad only in a
dressing-gown.
The conspirators, about to rush forward, checked themselves. There was
in the figure a certain air of dignity that awed them in spite of their
resolve. However insignificant in person, he was nevertheless the Czar,
descendant of a long line of Czars, only son of the great Catharine,
and nearest in blood to the mighty Peter himself. His picture hung in a
million homes; tyrant though he were, ten million persons would weep if
hurt befell the Little Father; ten million voices would demand vengeance
upon the slayers!
Appalled at the magnitude of their intended deed some of the conspirators
shrank back, and with averted faces stole towards the door.
But the master-spirit of the scene, Benningsen, intercepted them with
drawn sabre.
“No weakness, or I slay you.”
The figure spoke.
“By whose authority do you come here thus?”
“By the authority of the Czar Alexander.”
Paul’s eye flashed.
“Alexander is not Czar.”
“He will be when—you have signed this,” said Benningsen, holding forth a
paper. “’Tis your act of abdication.”
“I will never abdicate!”
“Sign!” said Benningsen, menacing the Czar with his sabre.
Paul defied them. As often as they repeated their demand so often did he
refuse. At last he seemed to yield.
“Give me the paper.”
The document was handed to him. He rent it to fragments and tossed them
at their feet.
The smile of triumph accompanying the act provoked Benningsen to fury;
in a moment of forgetfulness he smote Paul upon the face. Too late he
realised what he had done.
“I have struck the Czar! We are all lost—_if he does not die_!”
The conspirators shuddered; there was now no retreat.
Flinging himself upon the Czar, Benningsen brought him to the floor.
Emboldened by his example the others crowded around. There was a flash of
steel.
“Hold!” cried Benningsen. “No bloodshed. No disfiguring mark on the body.
A sash, some one!”
Paul, not realising till that moment that resistance might end in
death, suddenly lost courage. His words were no longer threatening, but
supplicatory.
“Spare—me—I will—abdicate—!”
He could get out the words in gasps only. Benningsen’s great hand was
pressing upon his windpipe.
“Too late! Will no one lend a hand?” said Benningsen, for the Czar was
making desperate efforts to fling his adversary off. “Must I do the work
alone?”
Several knelt and pinned the struggling Paul to the floor. Benningsen
rose, and directed their movements. A sash was slipped loosely round the
Czar’s throat, but in his deadly agony he succeeded in getting his left
hand through the noose, and drew it across his chin.
“Give me time—for God’s sake—a minute only—to say a prayer!”
His misty glance, wandering around in search of pity, suddenly fell upon
Prince Ouvaroff, who, with a troubled look on his face, had come forward,
bent, even at the cost of his life, on making an attempt to stay the deed.
“Ouvaroff—_my own son!_—among these men!—will you see your
father—murdered?”
The Prince, his mind absolutely frozen with horror at this sudden and
unlooked for revelation—a revelation that he felt to be true—stared with
ghastly look at the Czar. The assassins, in the surprise of the moment,
stopped in their work. Then the Prince, with a wild laugh like that of
a man who has suddenly become insane, swayed feebly forward and fell
senseless.
“I didn’t know we had a woman among us,” laughed Benningsen. “Good Lord!”
he continued, apostrophising the struggling Czar, “did ever man yell so?”
He set the sole of his great boot upon the mouth of the victim; the heel
slipped between the jaws of the Czar, who bit with such fury that the
teeth penetrated the leather and entered the flesh. With a snarl of pain
Benningsen withdrew his foot. Till his dying day he carried on his heel
the mark left by the Czar.
They got the noose around his neck at last, and two men, one on each
side, tugged at the loose ends. The work was hard and long; fully ten
minutes passed before they rose from their knees.
And now that the deed was over their courage fell again, and they stared
at one another in a sort of stupor. There would be a tribunal to face,
namely, the nation, and what would it say to this deed of darkness?
Benningsen still maintained his hardihood, at least outwardly.
“Who’d have thought the little ape had so much life in him?” he sneered,
looking down upon the body. “We have damaged him a little. But some paint
and the doctor’s art will soon make him presentable to the public. You
are all witnesses that he died of apoplexy.”
As they stole from the dimly-lighted chamber leaving Ouvaroff to awaken
beside the body of his murdered Sire, they caught the faint moaning of
the prostrate Voronetz.
“A lad of brave spirit!” commented Benningsen. “’Tis a pity he should
die. We’ll send Dr. Wylie to him to see whether he can be mended. But
he’ll have to hold his peace.”
Making their way to another quarter of the now alarmed palace the
ministers sought the chamber where the two Grand Dukes, Alexander
and Constantine, were confined—under sentence of death, so it was
believed—and setting the two brothers free gave them an account of their
father’s _execution_, seeking to pacify their grief and indignation
by the argument, doubtless a true one, that since Paul would not sign
the abdication, no alternative was left but killing. For let them but
retire from his bed-chamber, and Paul would at once have called upon his
guard to slaughter them; and, having now learned that his two sons were
parties to the conspiracy, he would doubtless have included them in the
slaughter. It was Alexander’s death or Paul’s, and they chose it should
be Paul’s.
“And thus,” said the Duchess, concluding her story, “thus did Paul die.
His body lies in state in St. George’s Hall. A solemn mass is chanted
twice a day—and twice a day the murderers bend in prayer beside the bier!
The mockery of it! Does God sleep that such things can be?”
The Duchess’s narration, correct in the main, as the historian can
testify, set Wilfrid’s nerves a-quivering with a variety of emotions.
Horror was followed by indignation, and indignation by loathing. The deed
itself was black enough in all conscience, but blacker still were the
cowardice, the hypocrisy, the lying employed to conceal it.
“In England,” he remarked, “these assassins would be swinging. In Russia
they are ministers. Truly, Alexander the Amiable merits his name. He _is_
amiable—very—towards his fathers’ murderers!”
The Duchess seemed to resent this disparagement of Alexander.
“Consider his position,” she answered. “Is he to begin his reign by
degrading the men who have put him on the throne? They who slew one Czar
may slay another.”
“And can a man die better than in the attempt to avenge his father’s
murder? If fear of the assassin’s dagger keeps Alexander from doing an
act of justice then have the Russians a Czar, but scarcely a hero.”
“You are bold, sir, in the absence of Alexander.”
“Nay, I would say the same in his presence.”
And the Duchess did not doubt it when she remembered how Wilfrid had
faced the fiery Paul—nay, had half-drawn his sword upon him.
Wilfrid ventured at this point to remind the Duchess of an earlier remark
of hers.
“You said, I think, that the Empress had a work for me to do?”
“True. The Empress, well knowing your character, appeals to you to do
what the boldest in St. Petersburg would shrink from doing, namely, to
make known to the world the truth respecting Paul’s death.”
“I am indeed honoured, but in doing her will I shall be trenching on the
Czar’s ground. It is his duty, not mine.”
“The Czar remains silent from a mistaken sense of honour. Looking upon
Paul’s death as a regrettable accident, Alexander would deem it a breach
of faith on his part were he to denounce those with whom he was equally a
conspirator. He had pledged his written word that the ministers should
retain office. That word he will not break. But he must be made to break
it. And the Empress sees but one way. There is something greater than
even the power of a Czar, and that is, the will of a united people. Why
do the ministers conceal their crime? Because they fear the people. Let
the millions of Russia learn how Paul came by his end, and there will
arise a flood of indignation strong enough to sweep the ministers from
power. But that day will not come till a man be found bold enough to
proclaim the truth.”
“And does the Empress invite _me_ to be the avenger of that Czar who, for
no fault at all, would have had me knouted to death?”
“Yes, for she judges that Lord Courtenay is too noble to refuse an act of
justice to a fallen foe.”
“Humph!” said Wilfrid, immensely flattered; “is Alexander a party to this
scheme?”
“No. It is of the Empress’s own devising.”
“She leaves it to an Englishman to teach her son his duty?”
The Duchess winced.
“How hard you are on Alexander!”
He was, and that because he wished to disillusion her of her idea that
Alexander was a hero. “Women are all alike,” he thought; by “women”
meaning the Duchess and Pauline. “A crown dazzles them. A king can do no
wrong.”
“Has her majesty,” he continued aloud, “any plan for me, or am I left to
follow my own devices?”
“In view of the peril attendant upon the enterprise—for those who slew
a Czar may not hesitate to slay the man who publishes their crime—the
Empress has thought of a plan that can be carried out with secrecy, and
yet with effect. What you did once, the Empress bids you do again.”
The Duchess proceeded to make clear her meaning by words spoken in a
subdued key. The communication, whatever its nature, caused Wilfrid’s
eyes to brighten and his lips to take a smile as of coming triumph. He
accepted the office, not so much because justice required it or the
Empress wished it, as because he saw that success would give pleasure to
the Duchess.
“You understand, now,” continued she, “why the Empress has summoned you
to this death-chamber. It is needful that you should see it with your own
eyes, and to-morrow would have been too late.”
“Not a feature of it has escaped me,” said Wilfrid. And, indeed, he was
confident that if he should live for a century the aspect of the little
bedroom would never fade from his mind.
“Besides the ministers,” she continued, “there are others to be made a
mark for public hatred.”
“Among them being——?”
“Pauline de Vaucluse.”
Wilfrid turned upon her a look of wonder.
“The Baroness was not with the assassins.”
“In spirit she was. She was the very soul of the plot. The conspirators,
aiming as they thought for a better Government, were in reality dupes,
ministering to her selfish and wicked ends.”
Wilfrid frowned. Selfish and wicked? He did not like to hear such terms
in connection with Pauline, whose character he thought he understood much
better than did the Duchess.
“I fail to see what she has personally gained by Paul’s death.”
“Her reward, so she hopes, is yet to come.”
The Duchess, as she spoke, compressed her lips with an air which plainly
said that the reward, whatever it might be, would not come if _she_ could
prevent it.
“I greatly fear,” said Wilfrid, taking a decisive stand, “that even
were I persuaded that Pauline de Vaucluse was the wickedest of all the
conspirators, I could not treat her in the way you suggest.”
“Why, you must love her!”
Her tone implied pitying scorn for any one who could be captivated by a
Pauline de Vaucluse.
“My sentiment toward the Baroness is not love, but friendship. Caring
nothing for Paul’s anger she rescued me from the hands of his soldiers.
Shall I then requite her good deed by holding her up to the people’s
hate? No, I cannot do that, your Highness.”
“She ran no risk. It suited her to play the heroine, knowing that Paul
was to die that same night. But I speak to deaf ears, I see.” And then
abruptly changing the subject, she added:—
“Lord Courtenay, the Empress bids you ask a reward for your coming
service.”
It somewhat piqued Wilfrid to think that the Empress should hold him as
one incapable of doing a just and generous deed without hope of payment.
She was forgetting that he was an Englishman, and a Courtenay.
“Ah, yes! my reward,” he murmured, wondering what answer to make. Then,
all in a moment, a romantic and daring idea suggested itself.
“The reward I claim—nay, insist upon—is one that the Empress cannot give.
It must come from you.”
“From _me_?” she said, in a tone that somehow thrilled Wilfrid to the
heart.
“It is that if I succeed in deposing the Ministry, you will give me——”
“What?” as he hesitated.
“A kiss.”
Strange that it cost Wilfrid a greater effort to say these two little
words than it did to face the fiery Paul.
But the Duchess!
First she drew a sharp breath; then she started back, in her eyes a look
of anger so deep that it made Wilfrid almost regret his bold request.
“Do you think because Catharine has reigned that there is no modesty left
in Russia?”
“How can I think that, your Highness, when I look upon you?”
“Ask, instead, for fifty thousand roubles; you shall have them.”
“I prefer something more precious.”
“You—prefer—a—kiss—to—fifty—thousand—roubles!” she said, pausing in
surprise between each word.
“If the kiss come from you.”
“It shall never come,” she said breathlessly.
“Your highness, ’tis yours to refuse; ’tis mine also.”
“You mean that you will decline the Empress’s wish.”
Wilfrid’s grim smile implied that he would; and at this the Duchess’s
face assumed a look of dismay, for she knew Wilfrid to be the only man
qualified for the task required of him.
“Why do you ask this—this silly thing?” she faltered.
“That I may return home with the knowledge that I have kissed the fairest
lady in Russia.”
There was silence for a brief interval, during which the Duchess seemed
to become reconciled to the enormity of being kissed.
“And nothing but a kiss will content you?”
“I will add a second condition; you must at the same time tell me your
name, your rank, your history, and how it happened that I could save your
life, as you say I did, and yet retain no remembrance of the event.”
“To gain my ends I must consent to your humour. Thus then do I pledge my
word. Rid the Czar of his wicked Ministry, and”—her eyes drooped, and a
beautiful colour stole over her cheek—“and ... you ... shall ... take ...
a ... kiss ... from ... me.”
“Pardon me. There must be no taking on my part. The kiss must be freely
given by you.”
“You are a hard taskmaster,” she smiled. “Well, it shall be as you wish.”