BEHIND THE CURTAIN
The door by which Wilfrid and Marie had entered was not the only one
giving access to the room; at the opposite end was a second, partly open,
and along the corridor leading to this came the sound of voices, two in
number, a woman’s and a man’s.
Pauline and the Czar were approaching. A moment more and they would be
within the room.
Marie’s terrified air alarmed Wilfrid. She must be kept from the trying
ordeal of facing the Czar. As it was too late, however, to escape from
the room, he hastily drew her behind a curtain that hung across the
entrance of an alcove, and, seating her in a _fauteuil_ that happened by
good fortune to be there, placed his finger upon her lips as a warning
for her to be silent, a warning that was scarcely needed.
A moment afterwards the Czar and Pauline were in the room.
The drapery of the alcove consisted of two curtains, hung so as to leave
from top to bottom an opening of about an inch in width, that enabled
Wilfrid to see the Czar.
Tall and handsome, Alexander was endowed with a presence that, majestic
in itself, was rendered more so by a grand and brilliant uniform.
Wilfrid, despite his prejudice, was compelled to admit that here was a
_man_ as well as an emperor. His stately aspect seemed to breathe a sort
of challenge to Wilfrid, upon whom there stole that elemental feeling
that made the old heathen warrior raise his clenched fist to the skies
with the cry of, “I defy thee, O Odin! Come down from heaven and let us
try which is the better man!”
But Wilfrid’s desire to try conclusions with the Czar was immediately
lost in a new interest as he viewed that monarch’s manner towards Pauline.
As she entered, her hand resting lightly upon his arm, he was bending
over her with eyes that plainly spoke of love, though her reserved air
showed that she did not return the feeling.
Wilfrid’s gorge rose. Not content with making love to Marie, this
imperial libertine sought to lure Pauline also to his arms! Was this the
business of an emperor? Fortunately he seemed as little likely to succeed
in the one case as the other.
On seeing the two entering, Wilfrid thought that the Czar’s visit was
over, and that Pauline was conducting him through this apartment as being
the shortest way out of the castle. He was wrong. The two had come to
this apartment for a private talk, for the Czar, having led Pauline to an
ottoman, took his place beside her.
This was a development which Wilfrid had not anticipated. To continue
longer in concealment would be to play the spy, yet remain there he must,
on Marie’s account, since there was no way of quitting the alcove except
by revealing himself.
At first, with an odd sense of preserving his honour, Wilfrid tried not
to listen, endeavouring to fix his attention on other matters. But the
attempt was a failure; against his wish he was attracted by the words of
the speakers, and as the dialogue grew, so, too, did his interest.
“You were praying in the oratory,” said Alexander to Pauline. “Did _my_
name mingle with your prayers?”
“Yes, Sire,” answered Pauline gravely. “I prayed for you more earnestly
than ever I prayed before.”
The melancholy, seldom absent from the Czar’s face since his father’s
death, brightened into a smile.
“And what was the petition on my behalf?”
“That your Majesty might have a right judgment,” replied Pauline with a
meaning plain enough to Wilfrid, though not to the Czar.
“‘Sire!’ ‘Majesty!’” repeated Alexander, with what in a woman would be
called a pout. “Leave this formal style to ministers and courtiers. With
you I am Sasha. Ah! shall I ever forget the night when first you called
me by that name? Never did it sound so pretty as when coming from your
lips! And you said that your name to me must be no more Baroness but
Pauline. Do you remember?”
“I remember,” she answered with a sigh.
Becoming conscious of this restraint in her manner, Alexander eyed
her wistfully, failing, however, to divine the reason for her altered
demeanour.
He was not much more than a youth and a somewhat simple-minded one to
boot, but he had a high sense of his sovereignty, and it never occurred
to him that the gallantries of an emperor could be other than acceptable
to the object of them.
“Pauline, how beautiful you are!” he murmured after a moment’s silence.
Time was when she would have thrilled at such language. But to-night his
words had lost their old charm.
“Your Majesty must not speak thus.”
“‘Majesty’ again? But I let it pass. Why must I refrain from speaking the
truth?”
“You must reserve such language for Elizavetta only.”
“Elizavetta!” said Alexander, his face darkening with a noble but
mistaken scorn. “Elizavetta! A wife who from her wedding-day never loved
her husband.”
“I think your Majesty is wrong.”
“Nay, I will prove myself to be right. Do princesses ever marry for
love? Is it not their duty to take the suitor whom political interest
prescribes? Princess Marie of Baden was only fourteen when her parents
bade her prepare for her wedding. The Empress Catharine desired that she
should be the wife of her grandson Alexander, then a youth of fifteen.”
_Princess Marie!_ The title dropped lightly from the lips of the
speaker, but upon the woman behind the curtain it fell with a shock
more startling, perhaps, than if it had been the voice of the archangel
calling her to her final doom.
In one swift moment all the sweetness and brightness of life was
extinguished for Marie by the ghastly revelation that she was already a
wife. What booted it that her consort was a Czar? Better, far better, so
ran her wild thoughts, had she gone down in the waters of the Nevka, or
died on reaching the Silver Strand, than live to see this sudden mockery
of all her sweet hopes.
Her fingers were still locked within Wilfrid’s, but as she realised that
her love for him was now a sinful thing, that henceforth she must live
apart from him, that she must be handed over to a husband, who, at that
very moment was playing her false, a husband, who, in her present state
of mind was a stranger to her, nay more, utterly abhorrent, there broke
from her a low wail of anguish, which the Czar and Pauline would surely
have heard had not their attention been absorbed in each other.
As for Wilfrid, he, too, was completely stunned, as much by the thought
of losing Marie, as by the discovery that, purposing to deliver a
beautiful princess from the attentions of a too-amorous Czar, he was
really guilty of attempting to steal a wife from her husband. In the
matter of the duel it was now clear that the right had been on the side
of the Czar, a mortifying and humiliating thought for Wilfrid. Still, his
position was a blameless one, as far as he was concerned, being due, not
to intentional wrong-doing, but to ignorance.
“How could a girl of fourteen,” Alexander continued, “be expected to
love a man whom she had never seen? She married me because she was told
to do so. Without a murmur she accepted a new religion, the Greek; a new
name, Elizavetta. In the same way she would have accepted the Sultan and
Islamism.”
“In blaming her you blame yourself, who were equally submissive to
Catharine’s will.”
“For her submission I blame her not, but for—you shall hear.
“We married and at first were happy:—at least _I_ was. Her beauty, her
sweetness, charmed me. Yes, I truly loved her till—till I discovered that
I held only the second place in her heart.”
“I think your Majesty errs. How did you discover it?”
“In the early days of our betrothal she spoke to me of a certain
Englishman, Wilfrid Courtenay, and earnestly begged that she might be
permitted to continue wearing a locket containing his portrait on the
plea that he had saved her life.
“As heaven is my witness, I bore this man no jealousy: nay, I told her I
would love him for her sake, that when I was Czar I would invite him to
my Court and pay him high honour as one who had preserved for me a sweet
and fair bride.
“But mark the sequel.
“One night—it is now about two years ago—I entered her bed-chamber at a
late hour, and found her fast asleep. As I bent over her, admiring her
beauty, a smile curved her lips, and from them came a word softly spoken.
That word was—‘Wilfrid’!
“I started back as from the hiss of a serpent. The Englishman was in her
thoughts, his name was on her lips, his image within a locket lay upon
her breast!
“That night was the beginning of my suspicions.”
“Suspicions which Baranoff did his best to fan,” interjected Pauline.
“Baranoff has been the zealous guardian of my honour. ’Twas he who bade
me observe. And I observed. I watched and waited and found my suspicions
verified. Her guilt at the Inn of the Silver Birch rests on the testimony
of others, but at the Sumaroff Masquerade I had the evidence of my own
eyes. In a retired part of the gardens I surprised her, wrapped in Lord
Courtenay’s arms, submitting to his caresses. Detected in the very act of
guilt she durst not face me: she durst not return to the palace. She fled
that very night. Lord Courtenay disappeared at the same time. Is it not
plain that they went together?”
“Is that the talk of St. Petersburg?”
“Neither St. Petersburg nor the Court itself is aware of her flight.
Would you have me make my humiliation the theme of every gossip’s tongue?
No! the matter is kept a secret. The public journals have received
notification that the Czarina is spending a few weeks in religious
seclusion at the Convent of the Ascension. Meantime the police agents
have received their orders—to make diligent search for Lord Courtenay.
Where he is, there will Marie be found.”
“And when they are found?”
“For her, the nun’s cell; for him, the headsman’s axe.”
“Your Majesty is somewhat severe upon them. Seeing you have resolved that
Plato shall pronounce your divorce, why should she not be left free to go
with Lord Courtenay, if she will?”
“An ex-Czarina to re-marry! That were to put a premium upon adultery and
set a dangerous precedent. Let her have her lover? Give her the prize she
has been guiltily striving for? Let him parade Europe with an ex-empress
for his bride, boasting how he had won her from Alexander? That were a
humiliation too much to be borne. No! Death for him; for her, life-long
penitence in a convent.—She has chosen to forfeit my affection and my
throne; let me think no more of her.”
He took Pauline’s hand; she did not resist, but let her fingers rest
passively within his.
“Pauline, you know our compact?”
She knew, and the memory of it troubled her.
“I have not forgotten,” said he, “your sudden start when first I
confessed my love to you, your grave look, your pleading for Marie, your
little homily on virtue: ‘I may be the wife, I will never be the mistress
of a Czar.’ I loved you all the more for that saying. It was then I told
you of Marie’s secret longing, and you agreed that if guilt should be
found in her, and I should put her away, you would be my wife. Was it not
so? To prove how much I was in earnest did I not commit my promise to
writing?”
“You did, Sire. It is here,” she replied, withdrawing her hand from his
and taking the document from her bosom. “Let me return it to you. Or,
better still—”
She rose from the ottoman and, placing one end of the scroll to a lighted
taper in the chandelier, let the parchment burn till the flame all but
touched her fingers. The charred fragment floated from her hand to the
floor.
“It was a dishonourable compact. It shames me to recall it.”
The writer of the document had watched her action with a troubled look.
“Pauline,” he said gently, “in what have I offended? What has caused this
difference in you? Why are you so cold to-day? Speak, as you spoke at our
last meeting, or I—I——”
His voice trembling with emotion, he rose to his feet and, taking both
her hands within his own, strove to look into her averted face.
“Nay, do not turn from me,” said he. “It is a Czar that offers you his
love. Among the royal princesses of Europe is there one but would thrill
with pleasure to be as you are to me? All that I have is yours—palaces,
gold, jewels. You will be above queens. At my coming coronation you shall
sit beside me on the throne amid a blaze of glory, admired and worshipped
by all. Ten thousand swords will flash from their scabbards, ten thousand
of the noblest in the Empire will swear to shed their last drop of
blood in your defence. My ministers shall be nothing to me; it is your
sweet counsel I shall follow. Your policy shall be my policy. Do I not
know that the dearest wish of your heart is to see the exiled Bourbons
restored to the throne of France? That wish shall become a reality; at
your word armies shall march to overturn this Corsican adventurer.”
Pauline caught her breath at this last—of all his arguments the only one
that had power to move her. But her hesitation lasted for a moment only.
Strengthened by prayer, purified in mind, she had come forth from the
oratory a new creature, armed with a power that enabled her to set aside
the ambitious hopes that had dazzled her during so many months.
“It is useless to tempt me, Sire,” she said firmly, seeking to withdraw
her hands. “It must not be.”
“Why not?”
“I will not wrong Marie. I will not deprive an innocent woman of a
husband’s love, of an imperial diadem, to gratify my own ambition!
Once—with shame I confess it—I desired her to walk in the ways of
guilt; nay, I have plotted for that very end; her fall should be my
stepping-stone to glory and power; but now my eyes have become opened.
Equivocal as the Empress’s conduct may have seemed, I do not believe that
her love has ever seriously wandered from you. If your Majesty will sit
calmly down and listen to me, I will so prove her innocence that——”
The sentence was never finished.
Marie, overwhelmed by emotion, at this moment clutched at the _portiêre_,
and the curtain fell.
The fabric, though light, made a swish that caused the Czar to turn his
head toward the alcove. And there, clearly revealed in the brilliant
light, stood Wilfrid and the missing Czarina!