AFTER FORTY DAYS.
The iron hand of winter relaxed its grip upon Kronstadt when the
last bitter winds of March had exhausted themselves. Gentle breezes
followed upon the devastating gales; trees blossomed generously as the
snow sank through the face of the land, and the grass lifted its head
again. No longer was the sea imprisoned nor the ships that had
wintered in the merchants’ harbour. Marian, awake through long nights
in her cell at Fort Alexander, could hear the waves gambolling in
their new-found freedom or surging heavily against the granite walls
with which the vast fort opposed them. There were even days when a
kindly ray of sunlight came down through the barred windows and shone
upon the icon set up in the corner of the dungeon. Marian welcomed
these days, though her welcome was not without a certain pathos. She
remembered that it was spring-time in Devonshire and that the child
was alone. An intense longing for the freedom of the lanes and the
perfume of the flowers possessed her. It was not that the intended
discomforts of the cell galled her, for she was schooled now to
privation and to suffering; she had made up her mind to pay the
penalty which was the guerdon of her rashness. But the thought that
she was never to hear little Dick’s voice again, that he was dependent
now upon charity for the very food he ate, drove her almost to
madness. She had been forty days in prison; she asked herself how it
would be when days had become years.
Few visited her cell in those first hours of silence. They had sent a
woman from the Governor’s house to wait upon her, and she had seen the
Sergeant once or twice, though he had never spoken to her. But old
Bonzo came nearly every day and brought always the same promise.
“Tell us the truth, mademoiselle,” he would say, “and it will be well
with you. There is a room in Fort Katherine where you can see the sun
and watch the ships upon the sea. You shall go there when you are
sensible. But first we must know the names of those who helped
you--your friends in Kronstadt, your friends in London. You cannot
save them by silence. We shall catch them sooner or later; we shall
know how to reward you when you help us in the attempt.”
“I have no friends,” she would answer. “I have told you the truth. I
was poor, and they tempted me. I can tell you nothing more.”
Bonzo would lose his temper at this, and threaten her, but her courage
remained unbroken.
“You shall have the whip, and we will see what you can tell us then,”
he would cry. “Do you think to defy us, mademoiselle? Sapristi! I
could crush you with my fingers.”
“They are large enough, monsieur,” she said simply.
Bonzo would leave the cell and slam the door after such a scene. He
had hesitated until this time to carry out any of the threats he
uttered so glibly. He did not forget that Marian Best was an
Englishwoman; that the day might come when her story would be made
public. But he left nothing undone which could appeal to the natural
weakness of the woman; and there was a morning when she was carried up
to see a man flogged in the courtyard of the fort. The lash falling
brutally upon the bare flesh seemed to cut her own shoulders; the
screams and groans of the wretched victim were so many appeals for her
merciful intercession; she swooned when she saw the blood flow, but
her answer to Bonzo was unchanged.
“You are cowards here,” she said, “and you are not clever in your
cowardice! You do not know the truth when you hear it. And you have no
manners, monsieur. Oh, you do not frighten me at all. I laugh when you
look like that. If you could only see yourself, you would laugh too.”
She bore herself bravely indeed; but when the iron door groaned upon
its hinges, and she was left alone, and no sound but the surging of
the sea against the bastions was borne in to her from without, she
would sink down upon the bed, and tears and wretchedness would conquer
her. She had no longer a friend in all the world, she said. Her love
for Paul struggled for a while bravely against the damning testimony
he had given in the council-room. She was clever enough to think that
possibly some deep and hidden meaning was behind his words; but when
the days passed and he did not come, when no message, no word from him
reached her, the well of her love began to be dried up; she accounted
him her friend no more; she was, in spirit and in thought, a
broken-hearted woman.
The morning of the fortieth day dawned generously, for there was a
gift of April sunshine in her room and the gaunt stone walls were
touched with its warming glow. Marian awoke at daybreak, and being
permitted to walk for an hour upon the ramparts--a concession made to
her but thrice in the weeks of her imprisonment--she beheld the town
again and wondered that the sun of spring could so transform it. Even
the grim shapes of the barracks were softened by the splendour of the
morning light. She could distinguish the gilded domes and minarets of
the churches; the cramped yet picturesque houses huddled about the
merchants’ harbour; the masts of ships in the docks; the stately hulls
of ironclads and cruisers; could hear the blasts of bugles, the shrill
piping of whistles, the clank of the great hammers at the arsenal. But
the sunshine touched every outstanding object with its transforming
rays. The muzzles of the great guns, peeping from the tremendous mole
of the island, were capped with gold; there were flashes of fire upon
all the bright places of the ships; the sea sparkled and foamed and
rolled merrily over the silver shallows of sand. She could perceive
the Ingrian coast and the woods creeping down to the water’s edge; it
was for her an emblem of the life she had lost. The very beauty of the
morning awoke in her that intense longing for liberty which is the
swift punishment of the prisoner. Everywhere the new day spoke of life
and work and the gladness of being; but for her it had no message.
The short hour passed all too swiftly. She returned to her cell at
seven o’clock and to the meagre repast prepared for her. She asked
herself, while she drank the welcome tea and ate the coarse bread, if
Bonzo would come again upon that morning to threaten her or cajole her
as he had threatened and cajoled so often. An inconquerable spirit of
mischief prompted her to tell him some fool’s tale with which he might
occupy himself for a season. When someone knocked at her door
presently, she made sure that this was her opportunity, and began to
rack her brains for a plausible story. But the door was opened and the
man who entered was not Bonzo.
“Paul!” she cried, and then stood silent and wondering.
Her lover, for a truth, stood before her. She saw that he was dressed
in the full uniform of a captain of artillery--the green tunic with
the scarlet epaulettes and the scarlet and black facings, the
pipe-clayed belt, the high black boots, the fur cap with the golden
eagle for its crest. But his face wore deep lines which had not been
there at carnival, and the hand which rested upon the hilt of his
sword was thin and white. For an instant he could not find his tongue.
He stood rocking upon his heels as his habit was, while he sought
vainly for some word which might give his tongue release.
Marian had risen from her seat as he entered, and when her first cry
of wonder had escaped her she was quick to take pity upon him.
Instinctively she had hidden the plate of coarse bread behind her cup
that he might not see of what kind her food was; instinctively, too,
she touched her wind-blown curls with her fingers and looked down at
the shabby dress she wore.
“It is you, then,” she said, with a poor attempt at gaiety. “I might
have known that no one else in Russia would knock at my door.”
Paul did not answer her. He was staring at the wretched furniture of
the cell. He shivered as though the cold of the granite walls had
struck his own heart.
“My God!” he cried; “is this your new home, Marian?”
She expected that he would begin to excuse himself, and to tell her
why he had been a witness against her in the council-room. His pity
for her was an enemy of her resolution to hide the truths of her
misfortune from him.
“Yes,” she said, standing defiantly with her back to the wall;
“I am always at home here--to my friends. You need not ask me if
I have a day. I shall be glad--no, do not touch me--I am quite
strong--Paul----”
How it was she knew not, but when next she opened her eyes Paul’s arms
were about her and she was held close in his strong embrace. The tears
still glistened upon her cheek, but they were tears of gladness.
“Beloved,” he said, “do not wound me; I suffer too--oh, God knows!
Every hour has been an hour of pain since they took you away; there
has been no sunshine for me, no day, no night; my life has stood
still; I have lived in the darkness; my eyes have seen no image but
the image of her I love. Marian--you will not turn from me now?”
He held her closer for the passionate words to be whispered into her
ear; nor did she restrain him. The long hours of loneliness were
remembered too well that this new love should not win her gratitude.
“You told them,” she sobbed; “it was your word. They knew nothing
until you spoke. If I suffer, it is by your hand; your love for me has
brought me here. How can I believe----”
The reproach was choked suddenly upon her lips. The arms which held
her trembled as with cold. She looked into the face of the man, and
the pain written upon it turned her anger to pity.
“No, no, Paul--do not listen to me,” she cried in turn, clinging to
him. “It is not true. Oh, I am not changed; I am only weak, and ill,
and lonely. Tell me you are my friend; tell me you will help me!”
His answer was to kiss her again and again upon the forehead and the
lips.
“I am your friend always, little Marian. Would to God I could promise
as you wish! How shall I help you here--in this place? It cannot be.
You have made them your enemies, and they do not know how to forgive.
I am the servant, and it is my duty to obey.”
She looked up at him, and smiling now through her tears.
“And you have obeyed. Oh, I understand,” she said quickly. “When you
spoke against me I knew that you must speak. Paul, I do not love you
less because of that--how could I?”
She kissed him prettily, but a flush of shame coloured his face, for
he remembered how much fear for himself had prompted his confession in
the council-room. It was upon his tongue to make a full confession to
her, for his simple honesty rebelled at her generous confidence; but
she began to speak of other things, and chiefly of the terrible forty
days which had passed.
“You did not come,” she said, “and I counted the hours. Then I said
you would never come, or that you were ill. Paul, you have been
ill--your eyes tell me that.”
She held his face between her hands that the sunlight might fall upon
it, but he shrugged his shoulders indifferently.
“It was nothing,” he answered; “nothing at all. The work has been
heavy, and I am tired--I do not sleep. It will be better when the
summer comes.”
He did not tell her that for ten days after they had arrested her he
had been at the point of death, and was newly risen from a bed of
sickness to visit the fort. Nevertheless, a woman’s instinct guided
her unerringly.
“Oh, my love, my love, if I had foreseen all--if I had told you of my
folly and my trouble! And now it is too late; you suffer when you
should forget. Oh, you must forget, Paul; forget that I ever came to
Kronstadt; forget that you were my friend!”
He laughed brusquely.
“Shall I forget that I live, or that the sun shines?” he asked. “Shall
I forget that your freedom is to be won, that we are both upon the
threshold of our lives? No, for a truth, such things are not to be
forgotten. Let us ask ourselves, rather, how the folly is to be
undone, how our enemies are to be made our friends. It is because I
believe in the possibility of these things that I am here this
morning. If I can help you, Marian, it will be by telling them the
truth as you have told it to me?”
There was a question in his words, the unspoken thought that she had
hidden something from him.
“Paul,” she said earnestly, “you know that I have told you all as I
have told it to them. I have no friends in Kronstadt, none in London.
What I did was for the sake of the child. You see how it has helped
him, when they will not even let me write to him now.”
“They will not let you write! You have asked them, then?”
“God knows, I have asked them on my knees. You do not know what
humiliations they have put upon me here. I hope that you will never
know.”
Paul laughed again. She looked up at him with startled eyes, but he
held both her wrists and pushed her from him that he might watch her
while he spoke.
“You think that little Dick has had no message?” he asked.
“How could he?” she exclaimed, though a suggestion of the truth began
to dawn upon her.
“You think that he will write to you no more?” continued Paul, with a
child’s pleasure in his words.
A smile lighted her face.
“Tell me!” she cried; “do not torture me!”
Laughing still, he released her hands and took a letter-case from his
pocket. His thin fingers trembled while he fumbled with the many
scraps the case contained, but at last he found a paper scrawled over
with a child’s writing.
“There,” he said, laying the scrawl upon the table, “that is how
little Dick forgets to write.”
He turned away and walked to the door of the cell, a subtle delicacy
forbidding him to watch the tears upon the blotted paper or to listen
to the half-spoken words of love and gratitude. Almost his first
thought on the morrow of the dreadful day, when he had seen the
soldiers at the Governor’s house, was one for the child for whom this
sacrifice was made. And now he reaped his reward.
“Dick shall write every week,” he said, “and I shall be your
mouthpiece. Do not be afraid; I have planned it all, and he will learn
to call me brother. Are you not glad, little girl?”
“I love you,” she said simply. “I am lonely no more, for your love
shall be with me always.”
The footsteps of a sentry in the court without forced them apart, and
Paul began to remember again the purpose with which he had been sent
to Fort Alexander.
“I am come here to question you,” he said; “we must not forget that.
They think that you have friends, but I shall tell them all, and then
we shall see. They must not keep you in this place. I will not rest
until you are at Fort Katherine. I will see the General at once; he
shall know how it is, and he will not refuse me. Oh, you are to be
lonely no more, Marian--that day is past. We will begin the summer
together, and it shall be our summer always. The sun will shine upon
us and we will forget the shadows.”
“You make me forget them already, Paul,” she answered; “it is summer
for me now. I am happy even here when I know that to-morrow will bring
you to me again.”
“To-morrow and all the to-morrows,” he said cheerily. “I will find a
way, be sure; there is no door which my love for you shall not open;
no night so dark that I shall not see the brightness of your eyes; no
day so silent that I shall not hear your voice. God guard you, little
girl, and give you back to me!”
He stooped once more to kiss her and went from the room quickly that
he might say nothing which should awake her from this new dream of
content. There had been a ray of sunlight in the cell, but when he was
out upon the sea again it seemed to him that the sun shone no more and
that darkness lay upon the land.
“God help me! how could I tell her the truth?” he thought. “They will
send her to the capital and I shall see her no more.”