“I BELONG TO WILFRID, NOT TO YOU”
There was a spell of terrible silence, followed by an impulsive cry from
the Czar.
“Marie!”
More dead than alive the Czarina leaned against the side of the alcove,
her eyes set with a dreadful stare upon the face of the man whom she
could not think of as her husband. To her he seemed a veritable stranger.
And yet he had the right to take her from Wilfrid and do with her as
he listed; and as her dazed mind realised this there broke from her
bloodless lips a shivering mournful cry, like water reeds when thrilled
by the evening breeze.
As for the Czar, his mind was filled with consternation, rage, and
embarrassment. Though he saw before him his missing wife secreted in an
alcove with her lover, he was conscious of the ludicrousness of posing as
an injured husband, seeing that he was himself caught in the very act of
making love to Pauline.
The latter was scarcely less agitated than Marie herself. The deception
practised by her during the preceding month was now laid bare to Wilfrid.
She had hoped, by making a voluntary confession that night, to dull the
edge of his anger. Too late now! After her first hasty glance at the
alcove she stood with averted eyes, fearing to meet his reproachful gaze.
Of the four Wilfrid was the least embarrassed, though he scarcely knew
how to act in this dilemma.
By the law of God and of man Marie belonged to her husband. Yet a rapid
review of the facts—in particular the Czar’s illicit love-making—made
Wilfrid hesitate to resign her unconditionally to a man whom she
abhorred, and who had vowed his intention of immuring her for life
within a convent.
The Czar was the first to break the silence.
“An interesting tableau!” he said with a bitter sneer. “The guilty wife
and her paramour hiding from the husband’s gaze.”
Wilfrid’s eyes flashed dangerously, though he was compelled to admit that
the accusation was natural in the circumstances.
“A word of caution, Sire. We Courtenays are not accustomed to take
insults, even from emperors.”
“Brave words from the hero that fled the duel!”
“There was no fleeing on the part of Lord Courtenay,” said Pauline. “He
would have met your Majesty, but when on his way to the rendezvous he was
seized by my orders and brought to Runö.”
“An act of treason!” commented the Czar, the autocrat asserting himself
above the lover.
“It was the saving of your life,” was Pauline’s answer, a tacit
assumption of Wilfrid’s superior swordsmanship that galled Alexander’s
vanity.
“Stand aside from my wife!” he cried angrily to Wilfrid.
“Your wife! How can that be when but a few minutes ago you disowned her?”
The charge was true and the Czar could not deny it.
Scarcely knowing what to say or do in his embarrassment he looked hard at
his wife, she at him. Usually so loving she now seemed a veritable piece
of marble. It was impossible to understand so strange a change. Pauline
in refusing his love had shown some pity for him, but Marie, in holding
aloof, displayed not a trace of affection or regret; her manner was as
though she had never known him.
As he looked, a new feeling stole over his heart. Four weeks’ absence
seemed to have made her more beautiful. With that inconsistency
characteristic of human nature he now began to desire what but a short
time before he had been willing to discard.
Whether this change of feeling was due to Marie’s very coldness, or
to Pauline’s rejection of him, or to jealousy of Wilfrid, or to all
three causes working together, certain it is that Alexander found his
affection, long-suspended, beginning to revive; if Marie had made but
one step towards him he would have been willing to receive her. It was
hard to believe that he had lost her for ever. He wished that Pauline and
Wilfrid were not present that he might take her by the hand and speak the
tender words of the old days; surely, then, her hardness would relent?
An impulsive step forward on his part caused the Czarina to cling
shudderingly to her new protector.
“Wilfrid!” she gasped. “Remember your promise! Do not—do not give me
up to this man. I shall die if he touch me! God forgive me ... if I do
wrong! I cannot ... I cannot let you go. I am yours ... yours only.”
The rigid moralist, reasoning from a distance, will say that it was
Wilfrid’s duty to retire immediately in favour of the husband: but let
that moralist be in the like situation, with a beautiful woman clinging
to him, her lovely eyes appealing for aid, the perfume of her dress
casting an intoxicating spell around her, and he would do as Wilfrid did,
who, casting aside nice ethical consideration, silently vowed that Marie
should not be led off against her will.
The Czar stood perfectly confounded at his wife’s declaration.
“She calls him ‘Wilfrid’! Says she is ‘his alone’! My God! is this the
language of innocence?”
“She is not in her right mind,” intervened Pauline hastily. “She——”
But the emperor cut her short before she could make the necessary
explanation.
“It is easy to see that. He has corrupted her nature.”
“The Czarina,” said Wilfrid, though it grated upon him to use the title,
“has lived at Runö as purely as a vestal maiden. My word of honour upon
it.”
In view of Marie’s attitude at that moment the Czar might be pardoned for
declining to accept Wilfrid’s statement.
“Your word! Yours!” he retorted with ineffable disdain.
“Mine,” returned Wilfrid. “And never yet did Courtenay speak falsely,
or—sign a placard that his father had died of apoplexy!”
“By heaven, you die for that saying!” cried Alexander, clapping his hand
upon his sword-hilt.
“Faith! ’tis hard if one must die for speaking the truth!”
“Get you from the side of that lady,” said the Czar, his eyes blazing
with wrath.
“Do not leave me, Wilfrid!” murmured Marie.
“The Czar bids, but the Czarina _for_bids!” returned Wilfrid. “Honour
enjoins me to obey the lady.”
“By what right do you constitute yourself her champion?”
“By the right of every man to protect a woman, even the wife of another,
from injustice.”
“Injustice?”
“You have threatened an innocent lady with life-long imprisonment in a
convent. From such fate it shall be my duty to defend her.”
Emboldened by these words, and moved by a sudden impulse, Marie kissed
Wilfrid, placed her arms about his neck, and, facing the Czar, said, with
a proud light shining from her eyes:—
“I belong to Wilfrid, not to you.”
She was never dearer to Wilfrid than at that moment as she stood with her
arms about him—to the Czar, proud and defiant, to him, all tenderness and
trust. However questionable the nature of his triumph, Wilfrid would have
been more than human had he not felt a thrill of pleasure. His dashing
audacity could rise no higher: henceforth it must descend; he could never
hope to surpass the feat of hearing an empress declare her love for him
in the very presence of her husband.
Alexander drew his sword with intent to wreak vengeance upon the man who
had stolen his wife’s heart.
Pauline, trembling all over, threw herself in his way.
“No, no!—for God’s sake—your Majesty—you are risking your life! Consider
your rank—_Sasha_!”
[Illustration: WILFRID DREW HIS OWN BLADE AND ASSUMED AN ATTITUDE OF
DEFENCE.
“_By Neva’s Waters._”
_Page 299._]
Putting aside her detaining grasp Alexander, his blade gleaming in his
hand, advanced towards the alcove amid the screams of the two women.
With a movement, as swift as it was gentle, Wilfrid detached himself from
Marie’s arms, placed her behind him, drew his own blade and assumed an
attitude of defence.
“Leave this apartment to me and to the Empress!” cried Alexander,
pointing with his sword the way Wilfrid should go.
“If the Empress bids me,” replied Wilfrid.
But no such bidding came from the white lips of the Empress, who had sunk
half-fainting upon the seat within the alcove.
Wilfrid’s words, the Czarina’s attitude, put the finishing touches to
the Emperor’s fury. With a cry of “Look to yourself!” he rushed upon the
defiant Englishman, but, on the very point of making a savage lunge, he
stopped short; his sabre dropped; and then, his face flushing purple and
his eyes rolling in their orbits, he fell prostrate on the floor.