THE CZAR’S PORTRAIT
While Pauline was absent on her mission to St. Petersburg Wilfrid was
spending a pleasant time with the Princess, who, avowing herself to be
quite well again, refused in defiance of the orders left by Dr. Beauvais,
to remain any longer confined to her chamber, but went forth, under
Wilfrid’s escort, for a ramble around Pauline’s insular demesne.
It was a still summer day, and the island with its pine-groves and green
lawns lay like a lovely garden upon the bosom of the Neva, whose waters
were tinted with the delicate sapphire of the sky.
Wilfrid was certainly a fortunate fellow. Resident at the fairest season
of the year in a picturesque old castle upon an island lovely by day,
more lovely perhaps by night, with a beautiful young Princess for his
companion—what more could he desire?
The pair had reached in their rambling a blue tarn, so smooth and
beautiful as to have received from Pauline the pretty name of the
Fairies’ Mirror. By the water’s edge was a rustic seat, and here the two
sat down.
“Lord Courtenay,” said the Princess, turning her deep serious eyes upon
him, “let me hear again the story you told this morning. I am naturally
curious to learn all I can about myself.”
Compliant with her wish Wilfrid repeated his narrative, finding a
pleasure in the telling of it, partly because he loved to dwell upon
everything connected with Marie, partly because it was pleasant to have
so fair and interested a listener.
“You seem to have remembered my words very well,” she murmured, noting
that he had repeated her utterances with little or no variation.
“I trust you do not impute that to me as a fault?”
“And have you told me all? Have you kept nothing back?”
Just a trace of embarrassment appeared upon Wilfrid’s face, but, faint as
it was, it did not escape her quick glance.
“I can see it! No, do not equivocate. You are hiding something from me.”
Wilfrid’s manner confirmed the Princess in her opinion. What was he to
do? Tell her that she was suspected of being the Czar’s favourite? No,
much as he hated deceit he would rather tell a downright lie than let a
thought such as that rankle in her mind!
“Why do you hesitate to tell me all?” she asked.
“In telling all, I must tell of my own folly.”
“Folly in which we were both participants? Yes? Then I must know it. It
is not fair to hide my past doings from me. What was this folly?”
“Well, since you will have it. In asking me to paint _The Death of Paul_,
you made offer of fifty thousand roubles, which I declined in favour of a
sweeter guerdon.”
“And that was——?”
“Perhaps you will show as great anger now as you did when you first heard
the proposal.”
“Tell me, and you can judge.”
“I declined to paint the picture except on promise of—a kiss from you.”
“And what was my answer?”
“You gave the promise.”
The colour stole over Marie’s cheek. Was ever woman so unfortunately
circumstanced as she—compelled to accept whatever this Englishman said
about her? If he should go farther yet and say that she had promised to
marry him, how could she refute his statement?
“Did I redeem my promise?”
Wilfrid assented.
The Princess’s colour deepened. She longed to deny the action attributed
to her, and yet—and yet—the story brought with it a certain relief to
her perplexed mind. With drooping eyes, and speaking in a low tone, she
said:—
“I am glad you have told me this. It seems to settle a—a certain
question. Seeing that I must be twenty-three or twenty-four years
old, Pauline has—we have both—been wondering whether—you must not
smile—whether ... I ... am ... married. And now I think I know. Were I a
wife, a true wife, I could not have acted as you say I did.”
Wilfrid thought this reasoning just, and was very glad to think it such.
“You speak,” he smiled, “as if a husband would be a calamity.”
“He might be—in present circumstances. You forget there are two Maries,
the old and the new. The new, through no fault of her own, may turn her
face from what the old one liked. Would it not be dreadful to be claimed
as wife by a man whose appearance, in my present state of mind, might
fill me with aversion? And I ... I ... kissed ... you? We were alone, I
trust?”
“Humph! I regret to say that in the very act we were surprised by no
less a dignitary than the Czar, who, for reasons best known to himself,
appears to have been playing the spy.”
Here Wilfrid proceeded to relate how he had been challenged by the Czar,
and how the duel had been averted by Pauline’s action; and to every part
of the story Marie listened in wonder mingled with regret that she should
have been the cause, however unwitting, of such trouble to Wilfrid.
Vainly did she try to force her mind to recall the incident in the
Sumaroff Gardens, and as Wilfrid saw her knitted brow and pained look,
and guessed their cause, he urged her to cease troubling herself over the
loss of her memory, but to leave its recovery to Time’s remedial hand.
He himself tried his best to divert her thoughts, and by resorting
to a string of pleasantries, he succeeded after a time in moving her
to smiles, and once or twice to laughter, laughter so soft and sweet
as quite to captivate Wilfrid, and to make him wish—for he never for
a moment forgot the person of his great rival—that the Czar had been
present to hear it.
On betaking themselves to the castle again they found Pauline and
Beauvais just returned from their visit to St. Petersburg. Great was
Marie’s disappointment to learn that Prince Ouvaroff had, on the previous
day, left for Berlin, being sent thither on some diplomatic business by
Alexander.
“So Princess Marie,” smiled Pauline, addressing her guest, “must remain a
mystery to us for some time longer. It is unfortunate, but patience: Time
reveals all things.”
As the two guests had not yet seen all that the castle contained,
Pauline proposed to spend an hour in sauntering through its apartments,
a proposal to which both readily assented, and so, with Beauvais
accompanying them, they set out on the round; and as the doctor kept
close to Pauline’s side, it of course fell to Wilfrid’s lot to escort the
Princess.
As became a place that had once been the residence of an empress, and
that had seen little change in its furnishings since her death, Castle
Runö contained much to interest the new-comers.
With dramatic reserve Pauline kept to the last her fairest surprise,
namely, the Hall of the Czars, a gallery so called because its walls were
decorated with all the procurable portraits of the Russian emperors. To
Catharine’s original collection additions had been made by the castle’s
successive tenants, including Pauline herself, whose contribution was
represented by two pictures, one being the likeness of the late Paul, and
the other that of his son Alexander.
Of the many portraits the last-named was naturally the one to attract
most attention. Very keen was the look bestowed both by Pauline and the
doctor upon Marie as she gazed at the face of the reigning Czar. To
judge from their manner one might almost have thought them imbued with
the belief that the sight of this portrait would effect the instant
restoration of Marie’s memory, and they felt a sense of relief on
finding themselves wrong. Certainly the Princess stayed longer before
this portrait than any other, but her lingering was due to the story
told her by Wilfrid. This was the Czar who had challenged him to a
duel for a fault—if fault it were—that was hers and not Wilfrid’s.
Thinking of this, she felt more than ever drawn towards the daring young
Englishman who had gone forth to vindicate her honour with his sword.
She contrasted Wilfrid’s countenance with the Czar’s as portrayed on the
canvas before her, and unhesitatingly gave the preference to Wilfrid’s.
If the character of a man is to be learned from his personal exterior,
then in her opinion Wilfrid’s disposition was frank and open, Alexander’s
secretive and ambiguous. A similar conclusion forced itself upon Pauline,
for she, too, had been making a mental comparison between the two men.
Her sigh, noticed only by Beauvais, drew from him the whispered comment:—
“You are repenting?”
“Never!” she exclaimed emphatically.
“For the sake of _la belle France_,” murmured Beauvais encouragingly.
“What,” said Pauline, addressing Marie, “what is your opinion of
Alexander’s face?”
“It is a handsome one, but—but there is something about it I do not
like,” she replied, speaking in a somewhat lower tone as if afraid that
the portrait, overhearing the remark, might do something to show its
resentment. “See how cold the eyes are! It—seems to be frowning at me,”
she continued timorously. “What do you think of it, Lord Courtenay?” she
added, turning to Wilfrid.
“Our hostess,” he replied, bowing towards Pauline, “has so high an
opinion of Alexander that in her presence I hesitate to say anything
derogatory even of his portrait.”
To this Pauline did not reply, but continuing to address Marie, she said
with an odd smile:—
“Then I may take it that you would not like to be his wife?”
“His wife!” echoed Marie, opening her eyes wide, as if it had been
seriously proposed to marry her to Alexander. “What a strange
question!”—To judge by his quiet chuckle it was one in which the doctor
seemed to find some amusement.—“After what I have said of his portrait
you can guess my answer. Besides, has he not a wife already?”
“A wife whom he is ceasing to love,” remarked Pauline quietly.
“Why?”
“A childless empress is always a disappointment both to her husband and
to his people. Hence the reason, according to this morning’s newspapers,
of her visit this week to the Convent of the Holy Madonna, not the first
of such pilgrimages. There, prone upon the cold stone pavement, before
the picture of Our Lady, she will spend nights of devotion, praying that
her husband’s desire, her own, her people’s, may be answered. If Heaven
will not take pity on her tears, then will the Czar grow colder and
colder.”
Marie shivered all over with sudden fear. If the Czar’s alienation
from the Czarina should reach a point such as to cause him to obtain a
divorce, he would be free to set his love upon any woman he pleased.
What if he had already made her his choice? What if his anger at the
masquerade was prompted by a jealousy that saw in Wilfrid a successful
rival? How could she, one weak woman, offer resistance to the will of the
mighty Czar? She glanced again at his likeness, deriving from it a more
distasteful impression than before. During her course round the hall she
had surveyed more than twenty portraits, but none of them had exercised
so strange a fascination over her as this one. It seemed to defy her to
remove her gaze from it. Whether she stepped to the right or whether
she stepped to the left, its eyes, like those of a living being, would
follow her movements with the stare as of a person reproaching her for
some wrong suffered at her hands; and the longer she gazed, the more this
fancy grew upon her.
“Perhaps,” said Wilfrid, in answer to Pauline’s remarks, “it is as well
that Alexander should have no children.”
“Why?” asked Pauline, with an intonation so sharp as to show Wilfrid that
he had said something to offend her, and he wondered wherein lay his
offence.
“There must be a touch of madness in his blood,” replied he.
“Why _must_ there be?” asked Pauline, looking almost as much concerned as
if it were her own mental state that was in question.
“If the father Paul were mad is it reasonable to believe that the son
Alexander can be altogether sane?”
“And so you think that if Alexander should have a son——?”
“That son might develop the madness that may be dormant only, not
extinguished, in Alexander. Such a fear would ever be present to the
Empress. Picture her, in the long, slow course of months and years,
hanging over her child, studying every look and every word of his, every
mood and every act, watching and waiting for the fatal sign——”
“That might never come,” interrupted Pauline, in her voice a touch of
contempt, very unusual with her, at least when speaking to Wilfrid.
“Quite so, but to a mother’s heart this suspense would be almost killing,
and the Empress Elizavetta would do well to consider this point.”
These words seemed to put Pauline in a state of uneasiness.
“M. Beauvais,” said she, “there is a portrait, in feature and in
expression faithful to the original. Can you, as a physician and disciple
of Lavater, read insanity in that face?”
“One cannot judge of a man’s sanity merely from seeing his portrait,”
replied the doctor. “Let it suffice that Alexander, now in his
twenty-fifth year, has so far shown not the faintest sign of a disordered
intellect.”
Marie was disposed to regard the Czar’s quixotic challenge to Wilfrid
as a sign pointing in this direction, but perceiving the theme to be a
distasteful one to Pauline she refrained from expressing her opinion.
As they had now seen everything contained in the Hall of the Czars they
withdrew. Marie could not resist the temptation of casting a backward
glance at Alexander’s portrait, and observed that it seemed still to be
following her with eyes of reproach; in fact, so strange an impression
did this picture make upon her mind that she resolved for the future to
keep out of the Hall of the Czars.