THE HONOUR OF PAUL ZASSULIC.
Captain Paul crossed the courtyard of the Governor’s house and began
to walk rapidly toward the town of Kronstadt. Marian had listened to
his footsteps as he went, but her thought that he would return again
was not in his mind. Indeed, he scarce knew whither he went or upon
what errand; so that the sentry crossed himself as he passed and said
that his officer was drunk with vodki, a condition which every
right-minded artilleryman considered to be the ultimate possibility of
bliss. But Paul never saw the man. The snow, white and crisp upon the
ramparts, was so much slush and mud beneath his feet. The keen north
wind nipped his ears and cast flakes of the driven hail into his eyes;
but he had no thought to draw his fur hood closer or to button up his
cloak. An impulse to flee the house, the city, to escape at any cost
from the terrible position he had been placed in, was paramount. Once
he thought that death was the way, and at that he stood very still in
the roadway and asked himself what would be the consequences of his
death.
“It would not save her,” he thought; “she would be alone then. Even if
I hold my tongue they will know sooner or later. There is nothing
hidden long in Russia. It may be a week, it may be a month, but they
will know, and then----”
He walked on with tremendous strides, ignoring the salutes of the
troopers who passed him by the way; deaf to the music in the cafés;
blind to the lights flashing over the frozen sea. His life had been so
barren of difficulties until this time; his duty had claimed absolute
and ready obedience. If anyone had told him a week ago that the day
would come when he would hesitate to do that duty, he would have
struck the speaker upon the mouth and have shot him afterwards. But he
loved Marian with a tenderness and a whole-hearted devotion of which
none but an honest man is capable. Proud of his own strength, her
helplessness and gentleness appealed to him with pathetic insistence.
If it had been permitted to him to suffer in her stead, he would have
laid down his own liberty gladly. He pictured her cast out from
civilisation, alone, and friendless, and weeping in the pitiless
prisons of Siberia. The sweet touch of her hands, when she had put
them about his neck and craved mercy of him, was an ecstasy of memory.
That she should ask mercy of him who had worshipped her so long in
silence, that was a bitter day indeed!
“It cannot be--it cannot be,” he said to himself again and again. “She
did not send the plans to London; she did not mean to copy the map; it
is all a mistake; it will be proved so by-and-by. I will wait and see.
My God! if I should tell and she should be innocent! But she must be
innocent--she is!--I will swear it.”
All the chivalry in his nature waged war with the more subtle
pleadings of conscience. He told himself that it would be a crime to
speak of what he had seen, or to take Marian’s words seriously, until
he was sure that she had sinned. “She did not know what she was doing.
They tempted her in London, but we cannot blame her for that. It is
impossible that she can have sent a correct map. We are strong enough
to laugh at a little enemy like that; and I shall make her our friend.
She will learn to love Russia as she has learned to love me.”
He went on with a lighter step, happy in this contenting reflection.
But he was still oblivious of all about him--of the narrow streets of
the town which he entered, of the great looming buildings, of the
cathedral square, and of the soldiers’ cafés. When a man touched him
upon the shoulder and spoke to him, he awoke from his meditations as
one may wake from a broken sleep.
“It is you, my Colonel! You wish to speak to me?”
Old Bonzo, for he it was who had stopped him, laughed good humouredly.
“You have long legs, Paul, my friend,” he said. “Do not let them walk
away with you into the sea. Upon my life, you look as though you had
seen a devil!”
“I was in a hurry to get to barracks, Colonel; they will not begin
until I come, and it has struck nine.”
Bonzo’s eyes twinkled curiously.
“Old Nikolai will be gone to his room and La Petite to her
children--hein, my friend? You can come away from the big house while
the Englishwoman is still at the piano? I do not believe it. Ho, ho!
She is not well to-night, and that is why you walk fast.”
Paul shrugged his shoulders impatiently. He was thinking that Marian’s
very life might depend upon his words.
“Mademoiselle Best is now in the salon,” he said unconcernedly; “you
will find her there if you are going up. For myself, I prefer the
conversation of my friends.”
Bonzo gave a great guffaw and slapped the younger man upon the
shoulder.
“You shall tell that to the little Englishwoman to-morrow. I will
remind you of the words. When I go up to the house just now it will be
something to talk about. My friend Paul running away from the
petticoats! Bon Dieu! what a spectacle! Come and drink a glass of wine
with me, my son, for I have news for you.”
They turned into a café, and the Colonel called for the wine of
Burgundy. The place was full and busy, the gold and green of many
uniforms shining under the tremulous rays of many brilliant lamps. But
they got a table to themselves, and Paul hastened to gulp down a glass
of wine that he might hide his curiosity from one who could read and
interpret the slightest gesture of friend or enemy.
“Your news is from London, Colonel?”
Bonzo nodded his head and pretended to light a cigar that he might
watch the face of his companion.
“Yes,” he said, “from London.”
“And, of course, the story we were talking about the other day proves
to be ridiculous.”
Bonzo leaned over the table and whispered his answer.
“It is not ridiculous at all; it is true. The map which was sent is a
correct map. Every gun is marked; the depths of the channels are
given. The names of the garrison are accurate. We could not have made
a better map ourselves.”
Paul sat very white and still. He was asking himself whether he should
feign surprise or doubt. A little reflection led him to believe that
doubt would serve him better than surprise.
“Quelle sottise!” he said, leaning back in his chair and smoking
quickly. “You do not believe that story, my Colonel?”
Bonzo took up his glass.
“I believe every word of it,” he said; “more than that, I know it is
true.”
“You know?”
“Certainly I know.”
“Then there is a spy in the city! My God, what a thing to hear!”
Bonzo drank off his wine at a draught.
“Tut!” he said indifferently, “we shall know how to deal with it. And
mark you, my son, it would be another thing altogether if the man who
made the map were out of the city. It is just because we have him
trapped by the ice here that I can drink a glass of wine with you
instead of hurrying to the General with the news. To-morrow, perhaps,
we shall go and look for this man. There is no need to disturb
ourselves. No letters can leave us, no more maps can be sent to
London--at present. Why should we hurry? There is plenty of time, and
we do not see a man shot every day.”
Paul started in spite of himself.
“But you don’t shoot spies when there is no war,” he exclaimed
hurriedly.
“It is a fashion of speaking, my son. For my part, I would shoot no
one when there is the whip--when you have only to raise your finger
so, and your enemy is an enemy no more.”
“And you are sure that the man is still in the city?”
“I know it!” cried Bonzo, bringing his fist down on the table with a
great crash. “You will know it too, directly. You shall see the fellow
for yourself. Who can say? perhaps we shall send him to you at
Alexander. To-morrow you must have the cell swept, and the irons
ready, and the whip waiting. Certainly, we shall know how to deal with
it; but with those at the capital it is another thing. Voyez-vous, mon
ami, we can say no longer it is a jest, there is no spy in Kronstadt.
If we report this arrest, there must be inquiry, blame, recrimination.
But if we do not report it”--here Bonzo lowered his voice until it was
but a whisper--“if we do not report it, and the man who made the map
should die in the cell at Fort Alexander--hein, how would they accuse
us then? You understand, my friend?”
Paul’s heart beat quicker, for he understood perfectly. They would
flog the spy to death in the dungeons of Fort Alexander, that blame
might not rest upon their own shoulders. At the same time he did not
fail to remark that his companion spoke always of “the man.” Marian’s
secret was safe then!
“It is a clever thought, my Colonel,” he said quickly. “Why should we
be bullied by people at Petersburg who do not know of our
difficulties? If I were the General, I would report nothing. But he
must be sure of the man; and is he sure? You say that he is, and I
believe you. But I should be glad to see him for myself.”
“You shall see him to-morrow,” said Bonzo rising and buttoning his
greatcoat about him, “meanwhile, Captain, do not let us forget our
responsibilities. There is no officer here who should not be ashamed
that this work was ever finished; there is none who should not say to
himself, ‘My duty must be done.’ You have said so, I know. You will do
your duty and nothing will stand between you and the Czar you serve.”
He laid his hand on the young man’s shoulder almost affectionately.
Paul shuddered at the touch and the words, for he seemed to read a
deeper meaning in them. He told himself that he was already a traitor
in his heart, for he had kept the great secret, had kept it with an
effort which was an agony.
When he left the Colonel at the door of the café, the lights of
Kronstadt were dancing before his eyes; a fever of self-reproach and
doubt heated his blood and quickened his step as he went onwards to
the barracks.
“They will know to-morrow,” he said again and again; “they will know
to-morrow, and she must suffer.”
And he was impotent to serve her, impotent to do anything but remember
his love for her and bewail the doom she had brought upon herself.
Those who met Paul Zassulic in the streets that night declared that he
walked with the step of a drunken man. He passed them without
recognition, or jostled them rudely from the pavements. Here and there
he was upon the brink of a brawl. A cornet meeting him before the
Observatory, and being thrust aside with little ceremony, ran after
him to call him “hobbledehoy.” When Paul turned swiftly the youth
slunk off. There was no better pistol shot, no quicker swordsman in
Kronstadt than the young captain of artillery. Men spoke of his
cleverness as a thing of which the city was proud. Bullies gave him
the wall and proclaimed their desire to meet him only before other
bullies. He had proved his courage in many a difficult moment; his
word was a bond to them. Could they have read his mind as he stalked
past them on his way to the barracks, they would have known that
courage was now wrestling with the agony of self-reproach; that he was
saying to himself, “I will tell at midnight, at dawn, before the sun
sets to-morrow.”
A hearty welcome always awaited him in barracks, but to-night the men
who rose to make way for him could not suppress an exclamation upon
his appearance.
“You are ill, mon vieux!”
“Fichtre! you have plastered your face with the snow, Paul.”
“He has quarrelled with La Petite, and comes here to be cured.”
Paul turned upon the speaker, a grinning ensign, savagely.
“Hold your tongue, or I will cut it out,” he said, and the boy slunk
from the room.
“There is nothing the matter with me,” he continued, throwing off his
cloak and helping himself liberally to the absinthe ready upon the
table, “or, if there is,” he added, “it is the wine of old Bonzo. I
have been drinking with him up there. You understand?”
The men exchanged glances swiftly. Some shrugged their shoulders,
others fidgeted with packs of cards in their hands. Paul turned to the
cards as to a refuge from perplexity.
“What are you waiting for?” he said brusquely. “Is it to make more
complaints about my appearance? You, Sergius, Karl, are you going to
sleep there all night? or is it Lent which troubles you?”
The lieutenants addressed rose from their chairs and seated themselves
in silence at the card table. They were asking themselves what was the
matter with their friend. They had a vague idea that the Englishwoman
was at the bottom of it; but were too careful of their skins to hazard
the opinion openly.
“I shall win your money, Sergius, and cure my headache,” cried Paul
boisterously, as his friend began to deal; “there is always a headache
if you meet Bonzo after dinner.”
“There is sometimes a headache if you meet him in the morning,” said
Karl, throwing a card upon the table. “That is the worst of these
silent men; you are always asking yourself what they are thinking
about, and so you get a headache. What is more, you never find out the
thing that perplexes you. I would wager old Bonzo against the devil at
any kind of cheat or cunning you like to name. He can read the papers
which lie in your pocket-book; I have known him to do it.”
“Did he drink Burgundy to-night?” asked Sergius, passing some roubles
across the table with the air of a man not yet warmed to the game. “I
keep out of his way when he drinks Burgundy--it is a danger signal.
Champagne, now, that means peace, and possibly a pair of twinkling
eyes. He has even patted me on the shoulder with the paw of a
domesticated bear--after champagne.”
“There will be no twinkling eyes to-morrow,” exclaimed an onlooker who
watched the game. “You have heard that he has news from the Prince--at
least, that is the story. It should mean that we are to learn all
about the map which went to London.”
Sergius laughed; Paul continued to watch his cards.
“For my part,” continued the speaker, while he lighted a cigarette
indolently, “I do not believe any such story--pas si bête. Someone
has played a joke upon the English, and we are paying for it with all
this fuss and trouble. As if a woman----”
“A woman!” cried Paul, looking up suddenly.
“Yes; have you not heard? They say that the map was drawn by a woman.
There is no doubt of it. Our own people in London have been at work,
and they are sure that a woman’s hand is to be traced. It is an
extraordinary story--to be told to a fool.”
The man strolled away to the stove, while the others played intently
for a little while, until, indeed, Paul of a sudden threw down his
cards and rose from the table.
“I cannot play,” he stammered; “you must excuse me, mes amis; my head
is going round. It is the cursed wine which old Bonzo drinks. I shall
walk in the cool air and then go to bed.”
He threw his cloak about his shoulders and quitted the room with no
further exchange of words. The cry of one of his companions, that he
had left his money upon the table, did not arrest him. He was saying
to himself over and over again, “A woman’s hand--they know that the
map was drawn by a woman!” He had the desire to run up to the great
house to warn Marian that the hour had come. He dared not to think
that he had touched her lips for the last time; nevertheless a voice
told him that it must be so. The blow was about to fall, the gate of
the prison to shut upon the woman for whom he would have laid down his
life.
“Sacre bleu!” cried Sergius the lieutenant, staring after the
retreating figure. “So Paul is like that to-night. And he has left his
roubles.”
“Not at all,” said Karl “He has gone up to see La Petite; he goes
there every night. They have quarrelled, I say, and he is off to tell
her that it was his fault. He will not be in such a hurry by-and-by.
He should have waited. It is much prettier to forgive a woman than to
be forgiven by her, and it does not cost you forty roubles.”
“Or make you ridiculous,” said one of the ensigns. “For my part, I
would not lose my temper for any woman in Russia.”
Sergius cut the cards idly.
“Vive la jeunesse!” he exclaimed gaily, “you will know better
by-and-by, mon vieux. I used to talk like that when I was twenty; but
I would not look twice now at any woman who could not provoke me.
Fichtre! it is not love at all until you have made her angry. And he
is very much in love, for he forgot to finish his absinthe. Let us go
to the square and hear more of the news from London. There will be
plenty to talk about by-and-by if the Sasha does not laugh at us.”
“Of course he laughs at us,” replied Karl; “how should it be
otherwise? Where is the woman who could make a map of Battery 3? Who
took her there, and where did she learn her gunnery? It is a child’s
tale and the General is wise enough to laugh at it.”
“Child’s tale or not,” chimed in the grinning ensign who had spoken of
La Petite when Paul first entered the room, “there has been one woman
in the battery. I saw her there myself. She took tea with Captain Paul
a week ago.”
“You mean the Englishwoman?” asked Sergius, turning swiftly upon him.
“Certainly. Ask Seroff if you do not believe me.”
A great silence fell upon the room, the silence of embarrassment and
of sudden revelation. There was only one man there who did not love
Paul Zassulic, and he had spoken. The others heard his words, but knew
not how to answer.
“You shall tell Paul that in the morning,” said Sergius, breaking a
troublesome silence; “it will amuse him and amuse us afterwards.” But
to the others he said, “This is no place for the friends of my friend.
Who is going with me to the square?”
They went out together, leaving the ensign alone in the room. They did
not speak to each other of the meaning of the things they had heard;
the honour of a friend was in their keeping.
Paul, meanwhile, had retraced his steps to the Governor’s house, and
now paced the courtyard regardless of the hour or of the night.
Streams of light were cast out upon the hazy air from many rooms in
the forbidding and barrack-like building; but one room alone was for
his eyes. He could distinguish, through the interstice of the
curtains, the depending lamp and the gilt mirror upon which Marian
displayed her photographs. Once he saw her pass the window swiftly,
her hair falling upon her shoulders. He was tempted to scout prudence
and to speak to her again before she slept. Although he had quarters
in Nikolai Stefanovitch’s house--for he was attached to the staff--it
was long before he could find the courage to enter or to learn what
Bonzo had done. The little star of light shining from the window of
the English girl’s room was for him as the lamp of a sanctuary. He
tortured himself with thoughts of Marian sleeping in the shadow of the
doom; he remembered her prettiness, her gentleness, her winning pride.
He said that they would crush that pride in the dust of suffering and
humiliation. The cruel severity with which the keepers of the gate of
Russia could punish even their own children was remembered by him with
loathing and regret. They would put unnameable indignities upon her,
he said. He foresaw the day when the childish face must become the
haggard face of the woman branded with the furrows of pain, and
torture, and mental agony. He swore that he would save her, though her
fate should become his own; and, swearing, he cursed his own impotence
and the very uniform he wore.
Snow fell in lagging flakes at this time; the wind had fallen
somewhat, so that all sounds, other than the sound of men’s footsteps,
were plainly to be heard. Paul observed the passing lights in the
great house, but could detect no omen of warning. The lamp in Marian’s
room was a message to him telling of her safety. He could peer in
through the window of the General’s cabinet and make out old Bonzo
standing by the side of the writing-table; but the Colonel’s attitude
was one of patient waiting, and it reassured him. “It is not for
to-night,” he told himself; “it may never be at all. Even if they know
that the map was drawn by a woman’s hand, how can they trace it to
her? If they had any news she would not be sleeping in her room, she
would be in----”
He ground his heel into the snow when he dared thus to think of the
possibilities. His mind was made up that he would stand sentinel no
more. He feared the observation, the chatter of the sentries. Old
Bonzo might find him in the courtyard when he returned to barracks; he
could imagine no greater calamity than to raise suspicion in the mind
of the Man of Iron. And this fear drove him into the house at last,
but with reluctant and halting steps. His own room, the bare room of a
soldier, was in the north wing, remote from Marian’s, but not so
remote that he could not hear the creak of her door when it opened or
shut. Nor did he enter before he had walked with a woman’s step to the
end of the corridor and had listened a little while to assure himself
that she slept. Then, delaying but a moment before the cabinet of the
General, he turned wearily to his bed and lay long listening for the
voice of Bonzo and for sleep to come upon the great house.
There was no light in his room, nor had he kindled one. The moonbeams,
striking upward from the glittering fields of snow, made glorious
lamps of the night to shed a softening radiance upon all things. He
welcomed them, for they spoke of rest, and sleep, and the balm of the
mind. He thought that they were playing upon the face of her he loved;
putting a crown of gold about her white forehead and kissing her eyes
with the kiss of dreams. When sleep took pity upon him at last, he was
carried in thought to the night of carnival and the love message it
bore him. He walked with her again through the silent streets of
Kronstadt, but anon, as he walked, she fell at his feet and a scream
of terror awakened the sleeping city. No word, no prayer of his could
hush that cry of dolour which he heard in his dream. It rang in his
ears, terrifying him; he bore her in his arms, but awakened troopers
pursued him; men came from the looming buildings to exclaim upon her;
he looked back upon the grim forts and mighty ramparts, and the angel
of death hovered over them; he clasped his burden the closer in his
arms and ran on; but the cry was unchecked, and phantoms of pursuit
multiplied until they became an army.
And so he awoke and sprang from his bed. There was a glimmer of
sunshine in his room, but the woman’s cry he had heard in his dream
still rang out in the silence of the great house. He listened for one
instant of agony and then reeled to the door. The corridor without was
full of the figures of gunners; he saw Bonzo, silent and grim; he saw
Marian, white and trembling.
“My God!” he cried, “the hour has come!”