FOREBODING.
The echo of the footsteps grew fainter and fainter, and was lost at
last in a murmur of other sounds--the sound of a sentry tramping and
the clang of arms. Marian listened keenly for some while in the hope
that she would hear the steps again, and that Paul would come back to
her, repentant of his determination. But the deeper silence of the
night fell again anon; the wind moaned dismally across the frozen sea;
the crash of the rending ice prevailed, and she knew that she was left
alone.
There had been a buzz of voices in the corridor when Paul left her,
and she opened the door of the room to hear who it was that had come
up to the place. She thought that she could distinguish the deep
baying tones of old Bonzo and the cat-like purr of the servant Ivan;
but these were silenced in a little time; and she said to herself that
she could delay no longer, but must go down to “the Dolls” and to the
farce played every night in the gloomy and depressing salon. Though
her hands still trembled, and there was a stain of tears upon her
cheek, she would not think of that which had happened in the last
hour. She cheated herself with the assurance that her lover would not
tell; she believed that his love for her would prove stronger than his
resolution to guard his honour. At the same time, her prudence did not
desert her. Remotely and vaguely she realised the possibility that the
work of the night might bring some swift and terrible punishment. Just
as she had told her lover everything, so did she determine to tell
other accusers nothing. She would play the part of the _ingénue_
again; she would answer their accusations with laughter and little
gestures of assumed fear and the weapons of the coquette. The utmost
that Paul could do, she said, would be to speak of a suspicion. It
would be her business to laugh that suspicion away, to make it
ridiculous.
While this was in her mind her fingers were busy in the execution of
the plan. Although she was dressed for the comedy of the drawing-room,
she began to undress swiftly, loosing the laces of her bodice and
casting off her clothes until she was able to unwind from her body a
scroll of paper, upon which were many little sketches and names
innumerable, and the depths of soundings and the armament of forts.
She laughed to herself when at last she thrust into the fire this
treasure which had cost her so many months of secret labour and daring
schemes. She knew that its contents were written also upon her memory,
and that she could make a copy of it from memory alone whenever she
might choose.
“They will search me and will find nothing,” she said to herself when
the ashes of the paper were scattered. “I shall write to England
to-morrow a letter for them to open. They cannot prove that I sent the
map to London, and Paul will not tell them. I shall go away from here
when the sea will let me, and that will be the end of all. Paul will
forget, and I----”
She turned from the fire with a sigh and began to lace up her dress
again. A tremulous excitement possessed her, so that she went from
place to place in the room, now pulling aside the curtain that she
might look upon the moonlit sea; now standing before her glass to
discover that her face was drawn and pale and almost haggard; or going
to the door to listen for the voices of “the Dolls.” It was nine
o’clock when she entered the salon, to find the children sitting like
mutes before a picture-book, and old Stefanovitch himself dozing
peacefully in a chair. The scene was one with which she was familiar.
She took courage of it, and whispered that nothing had happened. She
tried to think that Paul had not spoken to her, that she had imagined
the scene in the cabinet and that other scene with her lover. It lay
upon her to play courageously the part she had played always. When the
General awoke with a start, and sat staring at her stupidly through
the after haze of sleep, she had a winning smile for him and a ready
word.
“How stupid of me!” she cried, with a gesture of feigned amazement. “I
did not see that you were resting.”
She paused as though she would draw back, but the General silenced her
gallantly.
“Tais toi, tais toi,” said he, sitting upright and searching for his
glass; “how shall I keep awake when you are not here? Tell me that,
mademoiselle?”
“But I have no business to let you know that I am here--at such a
time, General.”
He twisted in his chair, seeking to follow her with his eyes as she
crossed the room.
“Du tout, du tout,” he said pleasantly; “you shall sing to me and I
shall forget everything. One of the English songs, ma petite--a little
song of the lofe--hein, mademoiselle, of the lofe?”
She looked at him prettily over her shoulder, and “the Dolls” rising
mechanically to stand one upon either side of the piano, she began to
sing the ballad of the King of Thule. She had a voice surpassingly
sweet and tender, and music was for her more than an accomplishment,
it was an art. The excitement and the passion of the past hour seemed
to mingle with the harmonies of the exquisitely tender ballad. Even
Stefanovitch, who thought that the angels must play upon trombones,
was held in a trance of admiration.
“Magnifique! magnifique!” he cried again and again; “it is the genius
which sings like that. You shall be heard in all Russia by-and-by, and
the Emperor shall applaud you. Eh, mes enfants, would you not sing
like mademoiselle? Is she not superb? is she not beautiful?”
He cackled and applauded again and again, while the children repeated
the words after him, though their wooden faces had no change of
expression, and the music was meaningless to them.
“Quelle une chanson delicieuse!”
“Oh, mademoiselle, si j’etais vous!”
“It is the song of Marguerite.”
“Sans doute--the song of Marguerite.”
“Si je l’avais connu, Marguerite!”
“Stupide! she is dead; n’est-ce pas, mademoiselle, Marguerite est
morte?”
Old Nikolai listened to their chatter and hugged himself at the trend
of it.
“Eh, what is that--you wish mademoiselle to tell you about Marguerite?
Ho, ho! Another time, children, another time. Mees Marian will first
tell that story to me--hein, mademoiselle, you will tell me the story
of Marguerite when we are alone?”
Marian rose from the piano, telling herself that it would be a
pleasure to box the ears of Nikolai Stefanovitch. But she continued to
wear a contented face, for the thought that the friendship of the
master of Kronstadt might yet serve her was strong in her mind, and
she acted upon it.
“I could not tell you anything, General,” she said; “I should not have
the courage.”
“The courage--not have the courage--with me? Oh, but I will give you
the courage; you shall lean upon me, mademoiselle. Ho, ho! you shall
lean upon me and be strong, and I will put the flowers in the
garden--the English flowers, hein? You shall find them and sing the
song again.”
She answered with a coquette’s glance. The Dolls stared at their
father open-mouthed. They could not understand how it was that he
slept when they were with him, or answered them in reluctant grunts,
while no sooner was their governess in the room, than these spasms of
gesture and ridiculous antics seized upon him, and he became another
man. Nor did they recall an occasion when Mademoiselle Marian had
responded so willingly to his foolishness. The _rôle_ of the demure
and shy little governess was cast off; she had become the coquette to
the “tips of her fingers.” Possibly, Mademoiselle Rina and
Mademoiselle Varia were very glad when old Colonel Bonzo entered the
room and put an end to such strange goings-on.
“You are engaged, my General?” he said, standing motionless at the
door.
Stefanovitch was on his feet in a moment. If he had shame to be
surprised in such employment, he did not show it.
“You wait for me, Colonel?”
“If you please, my General.”
“There is news, then?”
“There is grave news, Nikolai.”
Marian, who had been turning over the leaves of a book, looked up
quickly. The tone in which the Man of Iron spoke, his neglect to pass
a word with her, were warnings of instinct. She felt the colour
rushing to her cheeks; her hands trembled upon the pages; a voice
whispered to her--a voice of her imagination--“Paul has told them that
is the news.” Excitement of the hour alone had enabled her to bear up
before the General and the children. She had almost cheated herself
into the idea that her alarms were foolish shadows created by her
fancy; but now, when she looked Bonzo full in the face, it was as
though the hand of the accuser already touched her shoulder. Grim, and
stern, and unbending, the Man of Iron watched her with a searching
gaze which stifled the words upon her lips and held her chained by
fear to the lounge. “He knows,” she thought; “he knows, and has come
here to tell the other. Paul has spoken, and this is the end.”
“Mademoiselle, voulez-vous monter en haut?”
“Mademoiselle, I have the wish to sleep.”
The children spoke, and Marian rose with an effort. She turned to bow
to the men, but they had already left the room. She did not know that
minutes had elapsed while this agony of uncertainty troubled her. She
had not seen the stately salute with which the master of Kronstadt had
taken leave of her; the dreaded searching eyes of old Bonzo still
seemed to look her through and through, although the Colonel was no
longer in the room. They followed her, she thought, from the salon to
the bedrooms of the children; they watched her again in the corridor;
the same sensation of dread, and the desire to hide herself, was with
her when she entered her own apartment and locked the door, and sank,
weak, and trembling, and afraid, upon the couch.
It was near to the hour of ten o’clock by this time, and the bugles
were blowing in the barracks of the town. Marian had heard them often
when she sat alone in the room, and had welcomed them as a message
coming from the haunts of men. She asked herself if she would hear
them to-morrow. She looked across the jagged sea, billowed with
pinnacles of ice and swirling floes, and found in it the frozen
barrier lying between her and freedom. She began to ask herself if she
could seek any place of shelter upon the island. Had it been summer,
some English ship might have given her harbourage; but now, when the
Gulf was wrestling with the fetters of the ice, and no ships could
venture from the harbours, what hope was there of that? She could
distinguish in the courtyard below her window the shining barrel of
the rifle which the sentry carried. The vast mass of the ramparts
beyond showed other sentries swiftly pacing the outworks of the fort.
The tomb could not have caged its victim more surely than Kronstadt
had caged the woman who had betrayed her.
Midnight was struck in the town before she began to undress. Her
unwilling fingers went clumsily to the work; and when she had laid her
pretty gown upon the bed she asked herself if she had worn it for the
last time. Fear had wrought upon her nerves so pitilessly that she
could neither sit nor lie; but must be listening ever for the fall of
a foot in the corridor or the sound of voices in the courtyard
without.
“They will come in five minutes--in ten,” she would say. And she began
to plan the defence she would make, repeating the excuses she must
plead and the arts she must practise.
Or again, she would trust in the man’s love, telling herself that Paul
would not harm her, that he would find some way. She could not believe
that Fate would cut her off in a moment from the light of life and the
love of life, and that little world of self-content she had created.
All the comforts about her--the cheery fire in the stove, the pretty
chairs, the pictures, the bed wherein she had dreamed of little Dick
so often--she thought of these, and asked herself what magician’s wand
could spirit them away and set up in their place the reeking walls of
a prison. She had dared much, but the penalty of her daring remained
for her a phantom of her fears.
Her long brown hair was tumbling upon her shoulders now, and she
passed from her sitting-room to the little white alcove wherein her
bed stood. All was very still and quiet here; she could distinguish no
longer the wash of the waters over the ice nor the tramp of the
sentries upon the ramparts. She shivered with the cold, and lay for
hours wondering why the great house slept and no one came to accuse
her. When, at last, the lagging dawn was winged, white and misty
across the sea, sleep took pity upon her, and a befriending dream put
her arms about the neck of the child she loved, and she held him close
to her; and anon she walked with him through the lanes and gardens of
her beloved England. Nor did she know that when next she slept it
would be in the lightless dungeon of Fort Alexander at Kronstadt.