THE WORD OF TOLMA.
It was the evening of the day. Three men waited in the great
drawing-room of Count Talvi’s house in South Audley Street. The silver
clock upon the mantelshelf had just struck nine. Its ticking was the
only sound to be heard.
Of the three who waited, Tolma alone sat at his ease. He lounged in a
great chair and smoked Russian cigarettes incessantly. A glass of
Chartreuse at his elbow went often to his lips. There was a complacent
smile upon his face, the smile of a man who has played a great card
and waits for his opponents. He looked ever and anon at Bonzo, the
second of the three, moving in and out of the shadows which the dim
light of shaded candles cast in dark patches upon the heavy carpet.
But Bonzo was unconscious of the Prince’s gaze. His hands were linked
behind his back. He did not smoke. He paced the room restlessly. If he
had eyes for anything, it was for a white sheet of paper spread out
upon a writing-table in the alcove of the window. There his glance
rested often, as though some wonder would be wrought by an unseen
hand. He feared that lines would appear upon the paper.
Count Feodor, the third of the men, sat upon a sofa near the door. He
had a Russian newspaper in his hand, but he did not read it. His eyes
turned often toward the silver clock. He seemed to be waiting for
someone who should break the silence of the room. When, at five
minutes past nine, a carriage was heard at the door below, he rose
with a little sigh of relief. At the same moment, Bonzo stood quite
still and uttered an exclamation of satisfaction.
“Ha,” he said, “they have come then.”
“You mean that _she_ has come,” said Tolma, with a slight emphasis for
the pronoun.
“I wait and see,” replied Bonzo diplomatically; “I expect nothing,
Prince, from a woman.”
“And yet you owe everything to one, my dear Colonel.”
Bonzo resumed his sentry duty, but at the door he stopped suddenly. A
lackey was there to announce a guest.
“Mademoiselle Best,” cried the fellow in a loud voice.
Marian entered the room upon his heels.
She wore a black French hat, becoming and unobtrusive. The cape, which
Paul had bought for her, sat well upon her shoulders. Her gown was new
and rich and in excellent taste. Tolma chuckled when he saw it, for he
had caused it to be sent to her that very day. He said to himself
that, gowned thus, this English girl might hold her own in any room in
Europe. There was about her a dignity of presence, a sweet
graciousness which no mere childish prettiness of face could rival.
She seemed born to command. Nor did she betray the fear which had
dogged her steps when she set out for the house of Feodor Talvi. She
had been ready to take the word of Tolma, and he would answer for her
safety.
“Bravo! bravo!” he cried, struggling painfully to his feet; “I said
that you would come, mademoiselle. I told them that you would not be
afraid.”
“Why should I be, Prince?” she asked, with a pretty laugh. “Am I not
among friends?”
Again it was the old Marian who spoke, the Marian of carnival, the
light of the Governor’s house.
“Certainly you are among friends,” repeated the Prince, while he
raised her hand to his lips with an Eastern courtesy; “you have the
word of Tolma.”
“And the knowledge that I am in England,” she said with simple pride.
Bonzo laughed harshly.
“Mademoiselle prefers the English police,” he cried with iron gaiety;
“assuredly she is among friends here.”
Marian turned her great eyes upon him and looked him full in the face.
“Monsieur,” she said with a gaiety to which she had long been a
stranger, “you have helped me to my preference.”
“Arrivons!” exclaimed Tolma, “we are not here to write histories. What
has been has been; let us forget it.”
“No woman could forget Colonel Bonzo,” said Marian jestingly, with a
laugh, “at least, if she had shaken hands with him.”
Bonzo’s great face flushed angrily, but while he was still seeking a
clever answer, Count Feodor slipped out of the shadows.
“Colonel,” he said, “we forget the business upon which Mademoiselle
Best has been good enough to come here to-night. Is it not time for
that?”
“Sans doute,” exclaimed Tolma. “To the affairs. Why do we wait?
Mademoiselle is ready, I am sure.”
Marian looked from one to the other with anxious eyes. Then she
perceived the table upon which the white paper was spread.
“I am quite ready,” she said, though her heart began to beat quickly,
“when you tell me what you wish me to do.”
Bonzo advanced to the table and set it straight.
“Mademoiselle,” said he, “we have been so long away from Russia that
we forget our own country. You, they tell us, have a better memory. If
you will make a little map upon that paper, it is possible that you
will have no cause to regret the trouble we shall put you to. It would
be a map of Fort Constantine, mademoiselle.”
He watched her as he spoke. She drew off her gloves with trembling
fingers. The hour stood supreme among all the hours of her life. If
she had forgotten! If her memory failed her now! It was for Paul’s
sake, she said to herself again and again. It was that she might be
his wife. The lights danced before her eyes. The figures of the men
were blurred to her sight. She lived in a room of shadows. The white
paper seemed to spread out until it became a mighty scroll upon which
her own doom or her own joy was to be written. “God,” she prayed in
her heart, “help me, hear me!”
“A map of Fort Constantine? Oh, that is easy, Colonel!”
She sat at the table, guiding herself thereto with shaking fingers.
Minutes passed and she could not find the pen. Tolma put it at last
into her hand.
“Du courage,” he whispered; “it is for his liberty, his life. He is a
prisoner in this house.”
She took the pen; her hand ceased to tremble. Quickly she drew the
outline of the fort. The scratching upon the paper, the ticking of the
silver clock, were the only sounds in the great drawing-room. Those
who watched her breathed with an effort. The figure of old Bonzo seen
in the shadows was like a figure of bronze.
Fifteen minutes passed. The woman had forgotten where she sat. She
drew upon the paper with the skill of a trained draughtsman. She lived
again under the shadow of the mighty fortress. Kronstadt arose above
the sea of white waves. Line by line she conquered it; alone she went
into the chambers of the secrets; the living death came near but could
not touch her.
“There is your map,” she said.
The three were about her chair now. The paper was in Bonzo’s hands. He
laid it side by side with another map and compared the two. For ten
minutes no word escaped him. Then he drew himself up erect and
delivered his judgment.
“Mademoiselle,” he said, “there are few in Russia who could draw a
better map than that.”
She did not answer him nor the others as they exclaimed upon the
excellence of her handiwork. Rather she asked herself again if they
had mocked her; had brought her to the house to charge these things
against her. And while she stood, doubting and fearful she knew not of
what, the folding doors which divided the great room from a smaller
one behind it were thrown open by one of the servants, and she beheld
a little room fitted up as a chapel, and an old priest standing before
a shrine, upon which many candles were burning.