THE STORM BURSTS
The large drawing-room was brilliantly lighted. Another weary day had
dragged to its close. It was the Tuesday evening--the last Tuesday in
March five years ago. The starosta had not been near the castle all day.
Steinmetz and Paul had never lost sight of the ladies since breakfast
time. They had not ventured out of doors. There was in the atmosphere a
sense of foreboding--the stillness of a crisis. Etta had been defiant
and silent--a dangerous humor--all day. Maggie had watched Paul's face
with steadfast, quiet eyes full of courage, but she knew now that there
was danger.
The conversation at breakfast and luncheon had been maintained by
Steinmetz--always collected and a little humorous. It was now dinner
time. The whole castle was brilliantly lighted, as if for a great
assembly of guests. During the last week a fuller state--a greater
ceremony--had been observed by Paul's orders, and Steinmetz had thought
more than once of that historical event which appealed to his admiration
most--the Indian Mutiny.
Maggie was in the drawing-room alone. She was leaning one hand and arm
on the mantel-piece, looking thoughtfully into the fire. The rustle of
silk made her turn her head. It was Etta, beautifully dressed, with a
white face and eyes dull with suspense.
"I think it is warmer to-night," said Maggie, urged by a sudden
necessity of speech, hampered by a sudden chill at the heart.
"Yes," answered Etta. And she shivered.
For a moment there was a little silence and Etta looked at the clock. It
was ten minutes to seven.
A high wind was blowing, the first of the equinoctial gales heralding
the spring. The sound of the wind in the great chimney was like the
moaning of high rigging at sea.
The door opened and Steinmetz came in. Etta's face hardened, her lips
closed with a snap. Steinmetz looked at her and at Maggie. For once he
seemed to have no pleasantry ready for use. He walked toward a table
where some books and newspapers lay in pleasant profusion. He was
standing there when Paul came into the room. The prince glanced at
Maggie. He saw where his wife stood, but he did not look at her.
Steinmetz was writing something on half a sheet of notepaper, in pencil.
He pushed it across the table toward Paul, who drew it nearer to him.
"Are you armed?" were the written words.
Paul crushed the paper in the hollow of his hand and threw it into the
fire, where it burned away. He also glanced at the clock. It was five
minutes to seven.
Suddenly the door was thrown open and a manservant rushed in--pale,
confused, terror-stricken. He was a giant footman in the gorgeous livery
of the Alexis.
"Excellency," he stammered in Russian, "the castle is surrounded--they
will kill us--they will burn us out----"
He stopped abashed before Paul's pointing finger and stony face.
"Leave the room!" said Paul. "You forget yourself."
Through the open door-way to which Paul pointed peered the ashen faces
of other servants huddled together like sheep.
"Leave the room!" repeated Paul, and the man obeyed him, walking to the
door unsteadily with quivering chin. On the threshold he paused. Paul
stood pointing to the door. He had a poise of the head--some sudden
awakening of the blood that had coursed in the veins of hereditary
potentates. Maggie looked at him; she had never known him like this. She
had known the man, she had never encountered the prince.
The big clock over the castle boomed out the hour, and at the same
instant there arose a roar like the voice of the surf on a Malabar
shore. There was a crashing of glass almost in the room itself. Already
Steinmetz was drawing the curtains closer over the windows in order to
prevent the light from filtering through the interstices of the closed
shutters.
"Only stones," he said to Paul, with his grim smile; "it might have been
bullets."
As if in corroboration of his suggestion the sharp ring of more than one
fire-arm rang out above the dull roar of many voices.
Steinmetz crossed the room to where Etta was standing, white-lipped, by
the fire. Her clenched hand was gripping Maggie's wrist. She was half
hidden behind her cousin. Maggie was looking at Paul. Etta was obviously
conscious of Steinmetz's gaze and approach.
"I asked you before to tell me all you knew," he said. "You refused.
Will you do it now?"
Etta met his glance for a moment, shrugged her shoulders, and turned her
back on him. Paul was standing in the open door-way with his back turned
toward them--alone. The palace had never looked so vast as it did at
that moment--brilliantly lighted, gorgeous, empty.
Through the hail of blows on the stout doors, the rattle of stones at
the windows, the prince could hear yells of execration and the wild
laughter that is bred of destruction. He turned and entered the room.
His face was gray and terrible.
"They have no chance," he said, "of effecting an entrance by force; the
lower windows are barred. They have no ladders, Steinmetz and I have
seen to that. We have been expecting this for some days."
He turned toward Steinmetz as if seeking confirmation. The din was
increasing. When the German spoke he had to shout.
"We can beat them back if we like. We can shoot them down from the
windows. But"--he paused, shrugged his shoulders, and laughed--"what
will you! This prince will not shoot his father's serfs."
"We must leave you," went on Paul. "We must beware of treachery.
Whatever happens, we shall not leave the house. If the worst comes, we
make our last stand in this room. Whatever happens, stay here till we
come."
He left the room, followed by Steinmetz. There were only three doors in
the impregnable stone walls; the great entrance, a side door for use in
times of deep snow, and the small concealed entrance by which the
starosta was in the habit of reaching his masters.
For a moment the two men stood at the head of the stairs listening to
the wild commotion. They were turning to descend the state stairs when a
piercing shriek, immediately drowned by a yell of triumph, broke the
silence of the interior of the castle. There was a momentary stillness,
followed by another shriek.
"They are in!" said Steinmetz. "The side door."
And the two men looked at each other with wide eyes full of knowledge.
As they ran to the foot of the broad staircase the tramp of scuffling
feet, the roar of angry voices, came through the passages from the back
of curtained doorways. The servants' quarters seemed to be pandemonium.
The sounds approached.
"Half-way up!" said Paul, and they ran half-way up the broad staircase
side by side. There they stood and waited.
In a moment the baize doors were burst open, and a scuffling mass of men
and women poured into the hall--a very sewer of humanity.
A yell of execration signalized their recognition of the prince.
"They are mad!" said Steinmetz, as the crowd surged forward toward the
stairs with waving arms and the dull gleam of steel; with wild faces
turned upward, wild mouths bellowing hatred and murder.
"It is a chance--it may stop them!" said Steinmetz.
His arm was outstretched steadily. A loud report, a little puff of smoke
shooting upward to the gilded ceiling, and for one brief moment the
crowd stood still, watching one of their ringleaders, who was turning
and twisting on his side half a dozen steps from the bottom.
The man writhed in silence with his hand to his breast, and the crowd
stood aghast. He held up his hand and gazed at it with a queer
stupefaction. The blood dripped from his fingers. Then his chin went up
as if some one was gripping the back of his neck. He turned over slowly
and rolled to the bottom of the stairs.
Then Paul raised his voice.
"Listen to me!" he said.
But he got no farther, for some one shot at him from the background,
over the frantic heads of the others, and missed him. The bullet lodged
in the wall at the head of the stairs, in the jamb of the gorgeous
door-way. It is there to-day.
There was a yell of hatred, and an ugly charge toward the stairs; but
the sight of the two revolvers held them there--motionless for a few
moments. Those in front pushed back, while the shouters in the safe
background urged them forward by word and gesture.
Two men holding a hundred in check! But one of the two was a prince,
which makes all the difference, and will continue to make that
difference, despite halfpenny journalism, until the end of the world.
"What do you want?" cried Paul.
"Oh, I will wait!" he shouted, in the next pause. "There is plenty of
time--when you are tired of shouting."
Several of them proceeded to tell him what they wanted. An old story,
too stale for repetition here. Paul recognized in the din of many voices
the tinkling arguments of the professional agitator all the world
over--the cry of "Equality! Equality!" when men are obviously created
unequal.
"Look out!" said Paul; "I believe they are going to make a rush."
All the while the foremost men were edging toward the stairs, while the
densely packed throng at the back were struggling among themselves. In
the passages behind, some were yelling and screaming with a wild
intonation which Steinmetz recognized. He had been through the Commune.
"Those fellows at the back have been killing some one," he said; "I can
tell by their voices. They are drunk with the sight of blood."
Some new orator gained the ears of the rabble at this moment, and the
ill-kempt heads swayed from side to side.
"It is useless," he cried, "telling him what you want. He will not give
it you. Go and take it! Go and take it, little fathers; that is the only
way!"
Steinmetz raised his hand and peered down into the crowd, looking for
the man of eloquence, and the voice was hushed.
At this moment, however, the yelling increased, and through the door-way
leading to the servants' quarters came a stream of men--bloodstained,
ragged, torn. They were waving arms and implements above their heads.
"Down with the aristocrats! kill them--kill them!" they were shrieking.
A little volley of fire-arms further excited them. But vodka is not a
good thing to shoot upon, and Paul stood untouched, waiting, as he had
said, until they were tired of shouting.
"Now," yelled Steinmetz to him in English, "we must go. We can make a
stand at the head of the stairs, then the door-way, then----" He
shrugged his shoulders. "Then--the end," he added, as they moved up the
stairs step by step, backward. "My very good friend," he went on, "at
the door we must begin to shoot them down. It is our only chance. It is,
moreover, our duty toward the ladies."
"There is one alternative," answered Paul.
"The Moscow Doctor?"
"Yes."
"They may turn," said Paul; "they are just in that humor."
The new-comers were the most dangerous. They were forcing their way to
the front. There was no doubt that, as soon as they could penetrate the
densely packed mob, they would charge up the stairs, even in face of a
heavy fire. The reek of vodka was borne up in the heated atmosphere,
mingled with the nauseating odor of filthy clothing.
"Go," said Steinmetz, "and put on your doctor's clothes. I can keep them
back for a few minutes."
There was no time to be lost. Paul slipped away, leaving Steinmetz alone
at the summit of the state stairway, standing grimly, revolver in hand.
In the drawing-room Paul found Maggie, alone.
"Where is Etta?" he asked.
"She left the room some time ago."
"But I told her to stay," said Paul.
To this Maggie made no answer. She was looking at him with an anxious
scrutiny.
"Did they shoot at you?" she asked.
"Yes; but not straight," he answered, with a little laugh, as he hurried
on.
In a few moments he was back in the drawing-room, a different man, in
the rough, stained clothes of the Moscow Doctor. The din on the stairs
was louder. Steinmetz was almost in the door-way. He was shooting
economically, picking his men.
With an effort Paul dragged one or two heavy pieces of furniture across
the room, in the form of a rough barricade. He pointed to the hearthrug
where Maggie was to stand.
"Ready!" he shouted to Steinmetz. "Come!"
The German ran in, and Paul closed the barricade.
The rabble poured in at the open door, screaming and shouting.
Bloodstained, ragged, wild with the madness of murder, they crowded to
the barricade. There they stopped, gazing stupidly at Paul.
"The Moscow Doctor--the Moscow Doctor!" passed from lip to lip. It was
the women who shouted it the loudest. Like the wind through a forest it
swept out of the room and down the stairs. Those crowding up pushed on
and uttered the words as they came. The room was packed with them.
"Yes!" shouted Steinmetz, at the top of his great voice, "and the
prince!"
He knew the note to strike, and struck with a sure hand. The barricade
was torn aside, and the people swept forward, falling on their knees,
grovelling at Paul's feet, kissing the hem of his garment, seizing his
strong hands in theirs.
It was a mighty harvest. That which is sown in the people's hearts bears
a thousandfold at last.
"Get them out of the place--open the big doors," said Paul to Steinmetz.
He stood cold and grave among them.
Some of them were already sneaking toward the door--the ringleaders, the
talkers from the towns--mindful of their own necks in this change of
feeling.
Steinmetz hustled them out, bidding them take their dead with them. Some
of the servants reappeared, peeping, white-faced, behind curtains. When
the last villager had crossed the threshold, these ran forward to close
and bar the great doors.
"No," said Paul, from the head of the stairs, "leave them open."
So the great doors stood defiantly open. The lights of the state
staircase flared out over the village as the peasants crept crest-fallen
to their cottages. They glanced up shamefacedly, but they had no word to
say.
Steinmetz, in the drawing-room, looked at Paul with his resigned
semi-humorous shrug of the shoulders.
"Touch-and-go, mein lieber!" he said.
"Yes; an end of Russia for us," answered the prince.
He moved toward the door leading through to the old castle.
"I am going to look for Etta," he said.
"And I," said Steinmetz, going to the other entrance, "am going to see
who opened the side door."