THE CITADEL AWAKES.
Marian sat in the saloon of the _Esmeralda_, and the saloon was in
darkness. She still wore her pretty cap of fur, and the cape was
unbuttoned upon her shoulders. Her impatient imagination told her that
she had been a full hour in the cabin of the ship waiting for Paul to
come to her. But no more than twenty minutes had passed since she had
quitted her cell at Fort Alexander. The yacht was still running down
the southern shore of the island; the great guns still threatened from
the mighty ramparts.
Until this time she understood nothing of her lover’s purpose or of
the meaning of her journey. She believed that Paul was compelled thus
to steer toward the open sea that he might come to Fort Katherine,
which lies upon the northern shore of the island. Little as she knew
of ships, the tremendous vibration of everything around her, the
rattle of glass, the swirl of the seas against the ports, spoke of
high speed and freshening wind. It was her argument that they were
making Tollboken, the great lighthouse at the western point of
Kronstadt. The ship would put back presently and run down the northern
shore to the new prison awaiting her. The sweet hour of liberty would
be at an end; the door of a cell would close upon her again
unpityingly. When the launch was not put about, but continued to hold
its course for the Baltic, she could not understand why it was, and
was puzzling her brains to think, when her lover entered the cabin
brusquely, with spray shining in crystals of salt upon his oilskins
and the dew of the sea upon his cheek. He answered her unspoken
question, but not as she wished him to answer it.
“You have no fire and no light,” he said cheerily; “and this is your
welcome to the _Esmeralda_. Well, it will be better presently.”
She took his wet hands and held them to her lips.
“Paul,” she cried, “for the love of God tell me, what does it mean?
Where am I? where are you taking me to?”
He kissed her upon the forehead very tenderly.
“I am taking you to London--to your friends,” he said.
“Oh, you do not mean it,” she answered impatiently, “you do not mean
it, dearest. It is to Fort Katherine. I heard them say so.”
“If you think that I do not mean it, Marian, come up to the deck with
me and you will see the light of Tollboken. You had better come, for
we shall never look at Kronstadt again.”
He did not wait for her answer, but led the way to the companion and
to the deck above. When she stood there with him the wind blew so
freshly and the spray so blinded her that she must cling to him for a
while and cry that she could see nothing. But anon she got footing by
the shrouds of the mainmast, and from that place she looked over the
gathering seas and beheld a great white light hanging, as a globe of
fire, above the northern point of the island. She remembered that she
had seen the light for the first time when she came to Russia to be
governess to the children of Nikolai Stefanovitch. But now she was
leaving it; the yacht had not rounded the point as she thought it
would; it held a course straight for the open sea. She dare not ask
herself what this course meant.
“Well,” said Paul, “do you believe me now? Yonder is Tollboken. You
are looking at it for the last time.”
She began to tremble at his words.
“For the last time--and you?”
A shadow rested upon his face.
“Moi c’est égal. I am weary of Kronstadt and of my friends there. I
shall find new friends in England. Besides, I do my country a service
since I take charge of one who has been her enemy. Tell me, little
Marian, you will be the enemy of Russia no more.”
He drew her beneath the shelter of his oilskins and kissed the lips
upraised to his. But the girl was silent. She could not then measure
the sacrifice he had made so willingly. Of all the thoughts crowding
upon her mind this thought predominated, that her lover had saved her
from the living death.
“I do not understand,” she said at length, “I do not know what you are
saying to me. Oh, it is not true, Paul, it cannot be.”
“You shall tell me to-morrow whether it is true or not,” he answered
merrily. “Meanwhile, there is supper to think of, and after supper,
rest. It is time that we lighted the saloon; you are tired, Marian.”
She was about to tell him that her fatigue was only the fatigue of
joy, when a flame of light leaped up from the shore of the distant
islands, and the boom of a great gun rolled across the darkening seas
like the rumble of approaching thunder.
“Hark!” she said, starting involuntarily; “they have fired a gun from
Tollboken.”
Paul turned impatiently.
“It is a captain’s salute, little girl.”
“I think of the shadows again,” she exclaimed with a shudder. And then
she asked--
“Paul, whose yacht is this?”
“It is mine, Marian.”
“And you had the Governor’s permission to take me from Alexander?”
“Certainly, or how could you be here now?”
“He gave me my liberty, then?”
Paul laughed.
“You ask too many questions, Marian, and supper should be waiting.”
A second gun fired from the ramparts of Tollboken arrested the laugh
upon his face. He could conceal from her no longer the terrible dread
which had possessed him since the yacht left Alexander. She read his
secret upon his face; she knew that he risked his life for the guerdon
of her love.
“Paul,” she said, clinging to him now with a passionate gesture of
reproach and gratitude, “I understand all. Oh, God forgive me for
bringing you to this!”
“No,” he said, “where you live I must live, Marian; where your home
is, there must be my home. It could not be otherwise. Without you
there is nothing for me--the sun does not shine, there are no stars at
night. We will stand together for good or ill until the end, as God
wills.”
“I am not worthy,” she answered through her tears. “Oh, God knows, I
am not worthy!”
“You will be my wife,” he said simply; “you will repay a thousand
times.”
A grinning face, appearing above the coamings of the engine-room
hatchway, put them apart. It was the face of Reuben the engineer.
“Well,” said Paul, turning to him, “you wish to tell me----”
“That she is doing twenty knots, sir.”
“She must do more. Spare nothing. We must burn the very ship if need
be. Hark to that! It is the gun at Menzikoff, which means that the
garrison is alarmed. We shall see the lights of their ships soon.”
The grinning face disappeared, and anon thick smoke rolled from the
funnel of the _Esmeralda_. She plunged with new speed into the choppy,
spuming waves which the fresh wind drove in from the Baltic. The water
washed her bows and ran ankle-deep over her flush-decks. She had no
lights save the glow which hovered above her funnel or spread
fan-shaped when the furnace-door was opened. Every timber in her
quivered at the heightening speed. Not a man of the four aboard her
but knew that this was a race for liberty--it might be for life.
Yonder, through the northern darkness, lay freedom and reward; behind,
where the guns made thunder of the night, were the prisons of Russia
and the fields of Bondage.
Their course lay almost due west for a while and when they had been an
hour at sea they could discern the lights upon the Finnish shore no
longer nor the twinkling stars which spoke of villages on the Ingrian
coast. The Gulf broadened so quickly that they stood almost at once in
the heart of the widening sea, in the channel of ships steaming to
Russia or labouring to make Helsingfors. At one time a great ironclad
loomed above them suddenly and passed so close that they could hear
men calling to one another upon her decks. Or, again, they passed a
Norwegian barque lubbering in the swell in a vain effort to keep the
great breakers from her decks. These shapes loomed out of the dark for
an instant to be lost immediately. Scudding white mists hid the moon
fitfully as though relishing a jest with those who sought light on the
earth below. Storm-clouds began to gather in the south and to beat up
warningly. The night fell bitter cold and the wind was as a whip upon
the face.
“Come, let us go down,” said Paul, who hitherto had been held to the
deck as one chained there by the anticipation of advancing peril. “I
have tasted no food since midday; and you, little girl, I should be
ashamed to keep you here.”
“My place is at your side, Paul.”
“Then my side shall be in the saloon. And you shall give me my supper
there. It will be time enough to think of other things when we see the
light of their ships.”
“You think that they will follow us?”
“Is it possible not to think so?”
“They will send a cruiser?”
“Undoubtedly; but we shall not mind that. There is no ship in Russia
which can catch the _Esmeralda_ while she has coal in her bunkers; and
we have coal everywhere. Oh, it will amuse you well when the fun
begins.”
He entered the saloon and switched on the electric lights. The veils
for the ports were ready now, and when he had covered up the glasses
with them he gave the girl hot wine.
“You must drink it at a draught,” he said. “I want to see the colour
in your pretty cheeks.”
“Paul,” she said earnestly, “how can I thank you? how can I tell you
all I feel?”
“You can thank me by drinking the wine and afterwards by eating your
supper. You must say how you like the _Esmeralda_ and her cook. She is
my other self, this little ship. We have been friends many years, but
not the friends we shall be to-night.”
The steward, a portly, good-humoured, but, above all, fatherly man,
known in twenty ports by the name of Sal, by reason of his ability to
perform all woman’s work, now hurried into the cabin and set a
steaming dish upon the table.
“A bit of beef, and cooked with my own hand, miss,” he said. “I
thought you’d be glad of it, and so I made bold.”
She thanked him prettily.
“You come from London?” she asked.
A voluble man, her question was like oil upon his tongue.
“Indeed and I do, my miss. I was born at West ’Am, as my poor mother
knows, and precious glad I shall be to see Hingerland again. It’s a
dreadful thing to feel as you’re an ixile, miss. Fourteen years now it
is since I clapped eyes on London. As for these Russians, I can’t
abide ’em.”
Paul roared with laughter.
“Sapristi!” said he, “you’re a fine fellow to sign for a Russian
ship.”
“A Russian ship? No, it ain’t that, sir. I had the word of Reuben
afore I come aboard. ‘Where you like and when you like,’ says I, ‘but
no foringers for yours truly.’ And that’s what we signed upon. ‘As for
the young gentleman,’ says I, ‘he’s no Russian, or what’s he doing
with our lingo? You don’t find Joshua Sill sailing with foringers
willing.’ Five times round the world, miss, I’ve been, believe me. But
there ain’t no place like the country we was bred to, indeed there
ain’t.”
His patriotism choked him with emotion, and he withdrew, still shaking
his head. His talk had led them away for a brief moment from the hour
and the place, and the shadows passed from their faces. It was
possible, down there in the warmth and brightness of the pretty cabin,
to imagine that they, too, were already upon the seas of liberty and
safety; to imagine that they had come to that kingdom of love and
possession which they had sought in tears and tribulation and perils
often. They began to talk with a new confidence; to promise each other
what they would do when the sunny fields of Devon were theirs to roam
and the white cliffs of England stood up for their defence. The spell
of the warming wine worked upon them so that the man could tell
himself that the reward was greater than the sacrifice; the girl, that
love was at last born in her heart unquestionably, a love to endure,
to overshadow all, to be the very sap of her life. Lying there in her
lover’s arms, the past, the future, the scene, the peril alike were
forgotten. She lived in a present which was in itself an eternity--the
eternity of love realised.
In this employment of supper two hours passed swiftly away. Paul
lingered in the cabin because he knew that the deck might show him
that which he feared to see--the lights of the cruisers sent out from
Kronstadt or Helsingfors in pursuit of the _Esmeralda_. Trusting to
the quick eyes and to the devotion of his servant Reuben, he knew that
they would summon him when need was that he should go above. The
quiver of the boards beneath his feet, the jar of the glass upon the
table, spoke of the high speed maintained and of a smoother sea. Could
they but keep the _Esmeralda_ at such a speed she would outsteam any
vessel which Stefanovitch could command. The danger lay ahead--in the
warships at Helsingfors and at Revel. The telegraph could warn these
that a launch was escaping from Kronstadt. The _Esmeralda_ had yet to
pass the neck of the Gulf, yet to outwit those who would strain every
nerve to take her. Folly alone helped Paul to hope in the midst of
dangers such as these. Despair whispered that the girl he loved was in
his arms, but that he touched her lips for the last time.
“Let us forget, Marian, let us forget all,” he would cry; “let us
think only of to-night, and of each other.”
“I could never forget,” she answered with deep affection. “I am
unworthy of the love you bestow upon me; I shall be your servant until
my death.”
“You shall be my wife!” he cried passionately. “I will hear your words
all day. The days cannot be long enough. There shall be nothing to
think of--no past, no future, but only the moment of our love. When
to-morrow comes we shall be where no Russian ships can harm us. It
will be yours then to repay me, dearest, to remember whose servant I
have been and why I left Russia. You will be the friend of my country
as I shall be of yours. You will forget all that you learnt and saw at
Kronstadt.”
“I have forgotten it already, Paul. Oh, I should be for ever guilty if
I did not regret all that I have done and said, if I did not think of
Russia as of my own country. How could it be otherwise since I love
you?”
“They will tempt you,” he said: “they will offer you money as they
offered it before; and I am poor, I have no longer an employment. The
home which I can give you must be one of your own cottages. My friends
will not help me now; they will call me a traitor and forget my name.”
She shrank at the words, for they rebuked her selfishness. She
realised she had made him the partner of her guilt.
“Oh, no, no, do not say that!” she cried; “do not let me bring this
shame upon you. Take me back to Russia, Paul; to-morrow it will be too
late.”
“It is too late now,” he said with a bitter smile.
The door of the cabin opened as he spoke, and the face of Reuben,
still wearing the bucolic grin, appeared unwelcomely. Paul rose at
once.
“You have something to say to me, Reuben?”
“It is about the coal, sir.”
“Then I will come immediately.”
But to Marian he said--
“You must sleep now, little wife. To-morrow we shall be in the Baltic
and sunset will bring us to Stockholm. You can begin to think of
England then.”
She raised her lips to his and clung to him with a new tenderness. The
words he had spoken, that his friends would call him a traitor, echoed
again in her ears. She thought of them still when he had left her, and
they were an enemy to sleep. The gift of sacrifice cut her heart; it
poisoned the cup of forgetfulness she had tasted so willingly.
But Paul hurried to the deck, and so soon as his feet had left the
ladder he knew why Reuben called him. Away upon the port quarter a
great arc of golden light was playing upon the sea. Now rising in a
focus of dazzling beams, now skimming the water with a vast area of
radiance, now shining full as a star new fallen from the heavens, the
meaning of the light was not to be hidden from those on board the
_Esmeralda_. The telegraph had done its work. A cruiser had put out
from Helsingfors and was searching the Gulf for the yacht which sought
to carry from Russian waters secrets of such price.
“God help my little wife!” said Paul when he saw the light--and that
was all.