THE UNFORESEEN.
Paul rested his gloved hand upon the doors of his cab; he smoked
contentedly. For the first time since he had set foot in London the
streets and the people were without interest to him. A boyish
readiness to accept the possible for the actual had already carried
him in his mind to the realisation of fine schemes. He was sure that
fate would work some miracle of surprise for his particular benefit.
“I shall tell the truth; it is no good to conceal anything,” he
thought. “Feodor will write to the Prince at Petersburg and say that I
am here in London protecting the secrets of my city. If they had kept
Marian at Alexander, there would have been trouble with the English
Government; possibly, they would have been compelled to release her,
and then she would have returned here with all those plans in her
head. I do not see why it should be so great an affair. I have done
them a service, and they know that I am not a traitor. Granted that
they will not restore me to my regiment, there is other work for a
clever man to do. I might even go to the Balkans and serve Ferdinand
or the Austrians. When they learn how small my offence is, they will
not be too hard upon me. And I shall marry the little girl I love, and
take her where these English fellows will not trouble her. Ma foi!
what crowds, and not a soldier among them all!”
He was passing the Criterion at the moment. The crowd of idlers, the
youth of bars and stage-doors, the sleek dandy, the hastening clerk,
moved him to a fine contempt for their stooping bodies and undrilled
gait. A soldier’s blood had run in his veins from his birth. To wear
gold lace and to carry a sword, to strut in the market-place, to serve
the Czar--what other career was open to an honest man? Merchants and
traders--he regarded them as so many licensed thieves. Priests were
necessary to minister to the superstitions of the people and to pray
for the sins of the army. Professions were all very well for little
men and knaves; but they were not a career. As for himself, he had
inherited wits above the ordinary; but it never dawned on him that
they could be used to other ends than those of his regiment. There was
no better scholar in Kronstadt, no more promising officer of
artillery, but that, he said, was his good fortune. His wits would
never have been awakened but for the music of the great guns and the
clash of steel. Whatever lay before him, he determined to work to one
end--the right to carry a sword once more, once more to be the master
of the guns.
The cab, bumping roughly against the kerb, brought him back from the
success of thought to the broken baskets of reality. He saw that they
were in a narrow street before the doors of a large but ugly house,
which had no ornaments for its windows and little paint for its
railings. He paid the cabman the money which Marian had put into his
hand, and rang the bell of the house timidly. A moment later he stood
in a hall furnished with such exquisite taste, and so richly, that he
could hardly believe it to be the hall of the house before which the
cabman had set him down. But the man who opened the door was a
Russian, and that reassured him.
“Count Feodor--is he at home?”
“He expects you. He is waiting.”
Paul entered the house confidently. The magnificence of the
ante-chamber astonished him, for he had lived his life in barracks;
and such splendour of habitation as he had known was the splendour of
palaces at Petersburg or of hotels at Paris. When he followed the
footman up a broad flight of stairs and through a conservatory upon
the first floor, the same richness of decoration and of ornament
testified to the luxury with which Feodor Talvi had surrounded
himself. The apartment into which he was shown at last, though of
limited extent, was draped with exceeding taste. Dainty watercolour
sketches gave brightness to the silk-panelled walls; lounges cunningly
contrived were the emblems of ample leisure; flowers stood upon many
little tables; a stained glass window hid from the eyes the ugly stone
wall which bounded the garden of the mansion. Paul put his hat upon a
sofa and sat down with a great air of content.
“These diplomatists,” he said to himself, “they talk all day and dance
all night. They are paid twenty thousand roubles a year for telling
their neighbours that black is white. When there is any work to be
done, they go home. Fichtre! it should be easy to tell lies for twenty
thousand roubles a year. And Feodor has no need of them; he was rich
always. He must be very rich now.”
The footman left him when he had given his name, saying that the Count
would be disengaged presently. Paul took up a Russian paper and read
it through. It was a pleasure to be carried in spirit back to
Petersburg and his home. He found himself thinking about his friends
of yesterday--old Stefanovitch who had loved him, and Bonzo whom he
had feared and never understood. Karl, too, and Sergius and the
others--had one among them taken pity upon him and remembered that he
had been a friend of the old time? The pathos of memory was very
bitter. He was as a child shut out from his old home. Imagination
kindled for him a fire burning redly upon the hearth; the rays shone
upon the unpitying faces of those who had been brothers to him.
This occupation of regret carried him away from the house of Feodor
Talvi, so that he forgot where he was and upon what errand he had
come. When the little gilt clock upon the mantelshelf struck one, he
put the paper down quickly and remembered with amazement that he had
been an hour in the room. That rascal of a lackey must have forgotten
to speak to the Count, he said. Impatiently he pressed the button of
an electric bell, and it was answered immediately, not by the Russian
who had brought him to the boudoir, but by an English servant, who
seemed astounded to find a stranger in the place.
“You are waiting for the Count, sir?”
“If I am waiting!” exclaimed Paul, turning on the man as he would have
turned upon a defaulting corporal, “I have been here an hour! Is your
master out, then?”
“I don’t know, sir; I will ask, if you like--that is, if you wish it,
sir.”
Paul stared at the man with astonishment. If he had been in Russia, he
would have laid his cane sharply upon the shoulders of the rogue; but
he was not in Russia, and the English barbarians did not permit a man
to flog his servants. He was still seeking a word when the lackey shut
the door and left him to reflect upon a state of civilisation so
monstrous.
The little gilt clock struck a quarter past one; the man had not
returned. There was no sign of Feodor. Paul went to the door of the
room and threw it open. The house was silent as one of his own cells
at Alexander. He could hear a great clock ticking in the hall below;
there was a rumble of passing carts from the street without, but of
human life within the house no evidence. He returned to the boudoir
and rang the bell for the second time. To his amazement the Russian
answered him, and began at once to apologise.
“We expect the Count every moment,” he said stolidly; “my master is
sorry to keep you waiting. He has been called away. We are to offer
you lunch, Excellency.”
Paul assented indifferently.
“It is a peep-show,” he said with scorn: “first the English rogue and
then you. I shall speak to the Count, and tell him that he has made a
mistake. You should both dance in a booth--to the music of the whip.”
The Russian listened without changing a muscle of his face--he was
accustomed to a _rôle_ of servility. When Paul had finished, the man
set to work to clear a little table and to get the lunch ready. Then
he disappeared once more, and another quarter was struck upon the
bell.
“Sacré nom!” said Paul, pacing the room angrily; “the servants lie
better than the master! If this is the house of a diplomatist, to the
devil with the twenty thousand roubles!”
“My dear fellow!” cried a voice at the door, “do you know that the
chair you are kicking was once the property of Napoleon?”
He turned and stood face to face with the intruder. A spectator would
have said that the two men resembled each other as brothers of a
house. Both were tall and finely built; both had flaxen hair and blue
eyes; both held themselves as those trained in the school of the
world. If the newcomer was slightly shorter than the captain of
artillery, if his face was less sunburnt and more furrowed, that was
to be set down to the life of the city and the Court.
“Paul--it is you then?”
“Feodor--my friend!”
“You have been waiting here?”
“A century!”
“The devil! It is that rogue Demetrius again. You are hungry; _tais
toi_, we shall lunch and talk afterwards. I have a thousand things to
say; you have a thousand things to tell. I become a boy again at the
sight of you!”
He talked, indeed, with a boy’s enthusiasm, but said nothing
of that great and engrossing subject which Paul desired so
earnestly to broach. For the moment they might have been students
together--students enjoying such a rare day of fortune that they ate
the dishes of princes and washed them down with the wine of kings.
Paul wondered, in the moments of silence, if he had, in truth,
branded himself as an outcast and a traitor. For if that charge were
true, how came it that he ate and drank with Feodor Talvi and was
called brother by him? He could not believe in such good fortune. “He
does not know,” he thought; “he will not call me brother when I tell
him.”
The dishes were many before luncheon was done; champagne foamed in
long Venetian glasses; the dainty manner of the service was beyond
question. When the cloth had been cleared, Demetrius carried cigars
and liquors to a little bower of palms in the conservatory. Paul found
himself reclining indolently upon a sofa, while the Count curled
himself up in a basket armchair which Sleep herself might have
designed. For the first time since they had met, an embarrassing
interlude of silence gave the men opportunity for recollection. Paul
made up his mind that this was the time to speak; but before he could
open his lips Feodor asked him a question.
“The young English lady--is she well?”
The question was astonishing, bewildering. Paul opened his eyes very
wide, for he thought it was a jest.
“Oh, she is very well,” he stammered; “that is to say--you know about
her?”
The Count answered sympathetically--
“I know your story, Paul, my friend; I read it in a despatch four days
after you left Kronstadt.”
Paul took heart.
“If you know my story, you know also that I am no traitor to Russia;
you know that I am here in London to guard her secrets.”
“Exactly, or how could I receive you at my house? It was all clear to
me from the first. A pretty face, a clever little head, a bribe from
the English Government; my old friend falls in love with the pretty
face, and persuades the woman to deliver up to him all the plans she
has stolen. He comes here to give me those plans, and to tell me that
the woman may go to the devil, while he goes back to Russia.”
The smile left Paul’s boyish face. He stood up awkwardly against the
mantelshelf.
“You do not understand,” he said gravely. “It is not that, Count;
there are no maps to be given up. Marian has none. I am convinced of
it. When I left Russia it was to make sure that she did not see any of
her friends--that she did not betray us. It is true that her father
and mother died some years ago; but she has relations in London--the
Englishman who tempted her. I did not wish her to meet those people.
Judge me as you will for what is past, I have this to say, that, by
God’s help, I will never leave her side again!”
Feodor, no longer the diplomatist, but the man of the world, laughed
good-humouredly.
“Oh,” he said, “we are still in that stage, then. It is the second
stage, I think. When I was the bel ami of ‘La Superbe’ in Paris, I
took a course. You begin with a bad appetite and end by buying a
pistol. Convalescence dates from the moment when you present your
pistol to your brother at school and go out to dine at Voisin’s.
Complete recovery is to hear with equanimity that she, for whom you
would have died a thousand deaths, has married the leader of the
orchestra. Possibly, in your case, if you had stayed in Russia, you
would have been well by this time; but a change of air fosters these
complaints. A month, even two months, may be necessary now. And pity
is a factor. Send the girl back to her relations, since you know that
she has brought no luggage with her, and enjoy London for a month. I
can recommend nothing better.”
Paul took up his cigar and lit it. His hand trembled undisguisedly.
The love creed, chanted by the man of the world, was a thing he had
ever despised. He knew well the impossibility of convincing this dandy
of a dozen cities of the reality of his love or of the nature of it.
He would not try, he thought; he feared that mockery might cast a
false light on the name so dear to him.
“Do not let us speak of Marian,” he said after a moment of silence;
“you do not understand me, and I do not understand you. No man has a
right to say to another, you shall love here or there. If you are my
friend, you will help me at home. You must tell me what they are
saying there. God knows, I dare not ask myself that question. Have I
any longer a name in Russia? Is there any friend of mine to speak a
word for me? These are the questions I ask myself while I lie awake at
night and remember Kronstadt. The night is punishment enough--believe
me, Feodor.”
The Count, who disliked emotion of any kind, looked foolishly at the
fire of his cigar.
“My dear fellow,” he exclaimed in the tone of the candid friend, “it
is no good exciting yourself. And it would be absurd to tell you any
lies. How can I know what they are saying now at Petersburg. Am I
likely to find the expression of any sympathy in official documents?
When a man runs away from his regiment without leave, and takes with
him a young lady who has been occupied for a month or more in stealing
the plans of his fortress, he must expect his friends to open their
eyes. How could it be otherwise? We judge men by their deeds. As the
thing stands, you, in the eyes of the authorities, share the woman’s
guilt; we, who are your well-wishers, cannot stoop to help you with
the expression of false hopes. That you will ever return to Kronstadt
I do not believe. The thing is out of the question. Discipline would
suffer and you would suffer. But I will not say that influence at
Petersburg might not, at some distant day, restore you to the
Emperor’s service. It depends upon yourself and upon the course you
take here in London. You will not expect us to join with any
enthusiasm in a scheme for your benefit as long as you utter this
ridiculous nonsense about marrying the Englishwoman and constituting
yourself her protector. Oh, my dear Paul, do you not see that she is
the soubrette of your opera, and that her tears are shed only while
the curtain is up? By-and-bye she will be supping with the leading
tenor, while you are back in your own country and are ready to thank
Heaven that you have done with her.”
Paul bit his lip. He was within an ace of losing his temper and of
quitting the house.
“It is a lie!” he said doggedly; “there is no better woman breathing.
If you knew her, Feodor--if you were my friend, you would not say
these things. I came here thinking that you would help me; I am sorry
now that I came.”
The Count sank deeper into the cushions of his chair.
“Du calme, du calme!” he cried, with the air of one who is much
amused. “We are at the third stage now, and these are the symptoms.
While I knew ‘La Superbe,’ I had not a friend in Paris. There was not
a man whose throat I did not wish to cut. See, mon ami, how these
diseases resemble each other. As I live, you will fight me before
dinner-time!”
“No, indeed,” replied Paul very quietly; “I cannot quarrel with you,
Count. If your creed of life is not mine, I do not complain of that.
We will talk of it no more, for I am going home. It was a promise to
her. She will be waiting. I said that I would be away an hour, and
three have passed.”
A shadow of anxiety crossed the Count’s face.
“Oh, you must not talk about going,” he exclaimed earnestly, “and you
must not think me unfriendly. What has passed is nothing. We will talk
of serious things presently, and you shall meet one better able to
advise you than the mere diplomatist who sees everything through the
glass of office. If you think that mademoiselle will be anxious, write
a little letter and the man will take it. You will find pens and ink
in the library on the next floor. I am going to smoke here until you
return. It would be folly to go away now, at the beginning of it.”
Paul stood irresolute, but the Count touched a gong at his side, and
the Russian appeared once more.
“Demetrius, show the way to the library. His Excellency will give you
a letter; see that it is delivered at once.”
The library was a small room furnished prettily, with many books
chiefly in French. Paul wrote his letter quickly--a letter of love and
hope. He had met Feodor; the Count was his friend still; he was
waiting for another to help him to some position of honour and
emolument--all this he honestly believed as he wrote it. Never for a
moment did it dawn upon him that he was the victim of a trick. He was
convinced that the note would be delivered at once. He did not know
that Demetrius would carry it so far as the kitchen of the house and
there burn it in the stove. When he returned to the conservatory a
smile of content was upon his face. It was good to have found a friend
again. He determined to show a greater gratitude to the Count; but the
words he wanted would not come to his lips. Nor was the reason far to
seek. When he descended the stairs, whom should he see with Feodor but
old Bonzo himself--the Bonzo of Kronstadt; the Bonzo whose name had
struck terror into his heart so often; the Man of Iron whom all
feared.
The Colonel sat upon a basket sofa. He wore a black frock coat with
flowing skirts; his trousers were grey; his tie was a tremendous bow
in the French fashion, _négligé_ and ample. He smoked a black cigar
and sipped a glass of absinthe. When he saw Paul, confused and
hesitating, upon the threshold of the conservatory, his little eyes
twinkled merrily, and he held out a great paw, as though to give the
younger man confidence.
“Le voici!” he exclaimed boisterously, “le voici! the renegade, the
traitor, who has brought me all the way from Petersburg!”
Paul shook the outstretched hand timidly. The room seemed to dance
before his eyes.
“You here, my Colonel--you?” he repeated, with broken words. “You have
come to London to see me?”
“If I have come to London to see you! Do I make the Cook’s Tour then?
Am I here to visit the Westminster Abbey--have I the tourist’s suit?
Look at me--Bonzo--and ask why I come?”
He put the question in a voice of thunder--the voice Paul had heard so
often on the ramparts of Kronstadt. But the note of jest mingled with
a deeper chord, and the two who listened to him laughed when he
laughed.
“I should not call it a tourist’s suit,” said the Count, surveying the
tremendous proportions of Bonzo’s coat; “there is too much cloth in
it. They don’t make a fortune out of you, Colonel--those tailors.”
Bonzo nodded his head approvingly. He was a stranger to civilian
dress, and his new appearance amused him.
“Behold!” he said, “it is a coat for my son and for my son’s son. I
have worn it twice in fourteen years. It is only a barbarous people
that would wear a coat like this. Sit down, my friend, Paul, and see
how I degrade myself for you.”
He thrust a low chair forward, and Paul sat down, hoping he knew not
what, afraid to ask why the Man of Iron had followed him to the land
of exile.
“You are well, my Colonel? You had a good passage?”
“I am very well, my son.”
“You stay in London long?”
“Until I hear that a foolish young man has come to his senses again.”
Paul flushed. There came upon him irresistibly the impulse to appeal
to this strong man’s pity.
“Oh,” he said, “you do not think me guilty, Colonel? You do not
believe that I am a traitor to my country?”
“Du tout, du tout, my son; you are no traitor--you have not the
brains.”
Paul stopped as though one had shot him. The eloquence of pity, which
had inspired him in thought, deserted him at the first word of that
ironical response. As well ask mercy of the tomb as of the Man of
Iron.
“It was not a question of brains!” he blurted out presently. “I am not
clever, my Colonel, I know that, but I am no traitor to Russia.”
“Pah!” said old Bonzo, a little severely; “traitors do not run off
with chorus-girls and then say they could not help it. You are a fool,
my son; you have not the wisdom of the boy! What, when you had the
woman in Alexander, when she was alone with you, when you could have
made love to her all day, you bring her back here to her friends, you
cut yourself off from those who love you, and then say that you did it
for us! Oh, it is a story for a fairy-book.”
Bonzo spoke with a strong man’s contempt for the folly of the child.
Paul shuddered at his words. The horrible suggestion--for he knew well
what the other meant--fired his blood. He could have struck the
speaker on the mouth.
“Colonel,” he asked in a low voice, “you knew Mademoiselle at
Kronstadt, and yet you are ready to say these things of her!”
“Certainly I am ready. Would you have me cry that she is of noble
birth? Shall I raise my hat when I mention the name of Stefanovitch’s
governess, the daughter of an English _batushka_, a village priest at
fifteen hundred roubles a year? What, a woman who played with you as I
play with this leaf; who brings you to England to draw for her the
maps which she had not time to draw when she was with us; who will
laugh in your face presently and tell you to go to the devil--is this
the one that Tolma’s heir would marry? Pah! I have not the patience to
speak of it!”
Paul picked up a cigarette and began to roll it in his fingers. He was
unable to answer such an argument. Bonzo, he made sure, would never
understand him; the hopes he had placed in his friends were shattered
at last; they did not know Marian; they would never know her. He was
still searching for his reply to the accusation when the Colonel spoke
again, but with less heat.
“À la bonne heure!” he said, “I am not here to scold you. We will say
good-bye to this day of folly, for it is done. To-morrow you will
leave London for Paris, my son. It will be the beginning of your
journey to Vienna, where you will stay until this madness is
forgotten. After that we shall appeal to the Emperor. His clemency may
find for you some duty in the East. If you have suffered, those who
love you have suffered too. Even I--Bonzo--could I hear of this, and
forget that, of all at Kronstadt, you alone were a son to me? You
shall be a son to me once more--when you have left England.”
Paul stood up as the speaker continued. An undefined dread of some
calamity about to overtake him prompted him to speak.
“Colonel,” he said, “I cannot go to Paris with you to-morrow. I cannot
leave England. Mademoiselle is waiting for me now. I thank you with
all my heart for your promises, but the day for them is past. I think
of Russia no more. I shall find a home here. Some day you will
understand me.”
Bonzo waved his arm dramatically.
“Sit--sit,” he said; “this is not a theatre, Captain Paul. You are in
Russia here. This house is our house. It is the Emperor’s house. Your
English friends may come, but we shall not let them in. Be reasonable,
and make up your mind that mademoiselle must wait a little longer.”
Paul looked from one to the other with dazed eyes. Count Feodor had
risen, and stood with his back towards the window; the Colonel’s face
was not to be read.
“I do not understand!” he exclaimed excitedly. “You would not keep me
here against my wish, Colonel?”
Bonzo laughed ironically.
“For a few days,” he said, with a gesture of indifference, “until you
come to your senses, Captain. Meanwhile, if mademoiselle is waiting,
send another little note.”
In that moment the truth flashed upon Paul. He stepped backward as
though seeking a way of escape; there was the look of a hunted animal
in his eyes when he turned to the master of the house.
“My God!” he cried, “you would not do this, Count! You have no right
to do it. I must go back to my house. I tell you that she is waiting
for me.”
Bonzo answered him by striking a gong at his side.
“My son,” he said sternly, “she will wait many days yet. It is the
duty of your friends to save you from yourself.”
[Illustration: “SILENTLY, DETERMINEDLY, THEY FELL UPON THE FUGITIVE,
AND THREW HIM TO THE GROUND”]
The deep note of the gong echoed through the silent rooms of the house
like an alarum. The three men--for all had risen--stood facing each
other. They knew that the time for words was past. As for Bonzo, he
had ceased to smile; anger and determination were to be read in his
eyes. He looked around him with the air of one who has planned
everything, and whose plan is to be put into execution.
“You are mad, Captain Zassulic, and we shall cure you,” he repeated
triumphantly. “To-morrow we set out, but not for Vienna. The fortress
of St. Peter shall be your hospital. Fool that you were to pit your
wits against mine.”
He raised his hand to point threateningly, and, as if in instant
answer to the signal, the conservatory was filled with troopers in the
uniform of the Russian service. Silently, determinedly, with great
strength, they fell upon the fugitive and threw him to the ground. So
sudden was the attack, so swift had been the sequence of word and of
event, that Paul was a prisoner in their arms even while the thought
of escape was shaping in his mind. For a moment he struck at them with
the strength of ten men. Agony and despair gave him courage. The whole
bitterness of life seemed to be his portion.
“Marian!” he cried. “O my God, let me go to her--you kill me--I
suffocate--let me go to her--let me go----”
A strong arm, the arm of a giant, stifled the broken cries. The whole
landing seemed to be full of men. Though the captive struck right and
left, clutching at this object and at that, they carried him swiftly
from the place up and still up to the prison of the garrets. He beheld
other landings and the interiors of bedrooms poorly furnished, the
stairs were stairs of marble no longer, the light of the fuller day
fell upon his face through a frosted dome of glass. When they flung
him down at last, with blood upon his hands, and torn clothes, the
light was shut swiftly from his eyes. He lay in utter darkness, and he
thought it the darkness of hell. For he knew that the unpitying hand
of the Russian had fallen upon him even in England--the England for
which she whom he loved had longed so earnestly.