"Her Highness has this moment returned from driving, m'sieur," answered
the big Russian concierge, when, accompanied by Sonia, I entered the
hall of the great house in the Avenue des Champs Elysees, and handed him
a card.
Then a second servant, in the blue-and-gold livery of the Romanoffs,
conducted us ceremoniously along the wide, soft-carpeted corridor to the
well-remembered room wherein I had taken leave of the woman I loved. My
companion, in her neat, tailor-made travelling gown of dark grey cloth,
looked a very different person to the dirty, unkempt peasant woman who
led that band of desperate gaol-birds on the frontier, and as she
glanced around the fine apartment on entering, she observed, with a
slight sigh, that this was not her first visit.
The afternoon was breathless. All Paris had left for the plages of
Arcachon, Dieppe, or Trouville, or the baths of Royat, Vichy or Luchon,
and the boulevards were given over to unhappy business men, _cafe_
loungers, and soft-hatted, gaping tourists in check tweeds. The green
jalousies of the room were closed, the senses were suffused with a
tender and restful twilight, for the glare had been tempered to suit the
dreamy languor of that great mansion's world-weary mistress. The open
windows admitted, with air, the faint sound of traffic from the Avenue.
A lad passing somewhere outside whistled a few bars from the gay
chansonette, "Si qu'on leur-z-y, f'rait ca," which Judic was singing
nightly with enormous success at the Summer Alcazar. I noticed that
upon the piano there still stood my own photograph, while that of my
betrayer had been replaced by a picture of my wife.
With my back to the great tiled hearth, filled with ferns and flowers,
and surrounded by its wonderful mantel of Italian sculptured marble, I
waited, while Sonia, fatigued after our long and dusty journey, sank
into one of the silken armchairs, unloosened her coat, and sniffed at
her little silver bottle of smelling-salts. Scarce a word had she
uttered during our drive across the city from the Gare de Lyon, so full
she seemed of unutterable sadness.
During several minutes we remained in silence, when, without warning,
the long doors of white-and-gold were flung open by the flunkey who,
advancing into the room, announced his mistress.
Next instant we were face to face.
"Ah! Geoffrey. At last!" she cried, with flushed cheeks, a smile of
glad welcome lighting up her pale countenance as she rushed towards me
with both hands outstretched. A second later, noticing Sonia, she
suddenly halted. Instantly a change passed over her face. She was
unlike the gay, light-hearted girl who loved to idle up the quiet Thames
backwaters, or punt along the banks at sundown. She was different from
the happy, trustful bride who had wandered with me during those autumn
days in quaint old Chateauroux. She had none of the flush of joyous
youth, and the harder lines of resolve and determination were softened
by an expression for which there is no better word than consecration.
There were signs of endurance in her face, but it was the endurance of
the martyr, not of the champion.
Facing Sonia, she drew herself up haughtily, and demanded in French in a
harsh, angry voice,--
"To what, pray, do I owe this intrusion? I should have thought that
after what has passed you would not dare to come here. But I suppose
cool audacity is a characteristic which must be cultivated by a woman of
your character."
Sonia rose slowly from her chair, her features haggard and blanched, her
head bent slightly, as if in penitence. No effort did she make to
resent the bitter, angry words my wife had uttered, but in a low tone
simply replied,--
"I have come here with Geoffrey, to tell you the truth."
"The truth!" echoed the Grand Duchess, with withering contempt. "The
truth from such as you! Who would believe it?"
"Wait! Hear me before you denounce me," Sonia urged, in a strange,
hollow voice, that sounded like one speaking in the far distance. "I do
not deny that my presence may seem unwarrantable. I admit that between
us there can no longer be friendship, yet strange it is that, although
you are honest, upright and respected, while I am a social outcast,
spurned and degraded by all, there nevertheless exists a common bond
between us--the bond of love. You love Geoffrey, the man who by law is
your husband; while I love another, a man you also know;" and her voice
faltered, "the man to whom you denounced me as base and worthless."
"Well?" asked Ella, standing stern, upright, full of calm, unruffled
dignity. She still wore the cool-looking summer gown in which she had
been driving in the Bois, and had not removed her large black hat with
its long ostrich plumes.
"You are quite right, quite right," Sonia admitted in a voice trembling
with emotion. "You were justified to undeceive him as you did. I know,
alas! how black is my heart--how blunted is all the womanly feeling I
once possessed, like you. But you have been nurtured in the lap of
luxury, while I, fed from infancy upon the offal of a slum, and taught
to regard the world from a cynical point of view, have grown old in
evil-doing, and am now a mere derelict in the stream of life. Long ago
we met, and parted. I treated you, as I did others, as an enemy. We
have now met again, and I, conscience-stricken and penitent, have come
to atone for the past--to prove your friend, to beg forgiveness."
My wife shrugged her shoulders with a gesture of quick impatience.
"Ah! You don't believe I am in earnest," cried the unhappy woman. "Has
it never occurred to you that I alone can free you from the bond that
has held you aloof from your husband?"
"What do you mean?" cried Ella, with a puzzled expression.
"I mean," she answered, in a deep, earnest voice. "I mean that if you
will make full and open confession to Geoffrey I will furnish you with
proof positive of the identity of the murderer of Dudley Ogle. By this
means only can you obtain freedom from your bondage of guilt."
"My freedom!" echoed my wife. She was pale as death; her hot, dry lips
moved convulsively, and she glanced at me in feverish apprehension.
"How can you give me my freedom?"
"By revealing the truth," Sonia answered. "When you have told Geoffrey
all, then will I disclose the terrible secret that I have selfishly kept
from you because I envied you your happiness."
The silence remained unbroken for some moments. Ella stood with her
gloved hands clasped before her. The haughty demeanour of the daughter
of the Romanoffs had entirely forsaken her; with head bent she stood
immovable as a statue. Terror and despair showed themselves in her
clear, bright eyes. It seemed as though she mistrusted this woman of
evil repute, whose assertions half induced her to confess to me.
"Come," Sonia said, "speak, and freedom, love and happiness are yours."
Her breast, beneath its lace and flimsy muslin, heaved and fell. Her
fingers hitched themselves nervously in the trimming of her gown. Then,
at last, with sudden resolve, she turned, and with terror-stricken eyes
fixed upon me, said in English, in low, faltering tone,--
"To confess to you, Geoffrey, will cause you to hate, ah! even to curse
me. After to-day I fear we shall part never again to meet."
"No, no," I cried, advancing to take her soft hand in mine. "Tell me
your secret. Then let us hear what Sonia has to reveal."
"Ah! mine is a wretched, horrible story of duplicity," my wife faltered,
standing in an attitude of deep dejection. "Although I am a Grand
Duchess, the bearer of an Imperial name, I can hope for neither pity nor
mercy from you, nor from the world outside."
"Why?"
"Because I have foully deceived you. I am a spy!"
"A spy!" I gasped, amazed. "What do you mean?"
"Listen; I will tell you," she answered, in a hard, strained voice,
swaying slowly forward and clutching at the table for support. "Three
years ago, when my mother, the Grand Duchess Nicholas, was still alive,
we were spending some months as usual at our winter villa that faced the
Mediterranean at St Eugene, close to Algiers, and my mother engaged as
_valet de chambre_ an Englishman. Soon this man grew, I suppose, to
admire me. He pestered me with hateful attentions, and at last had the
audacity to declare his love. As may be readily imagined, I scornfully
rejected him, treated him with contempt, and finding that he still
continued his protestations, meeting me when I went for walks along the
sea-road to Algiers, or under the palms and orange groves in the Jardin
Marengo, I one day in a fit of ill-temper, disclosed to my mother the
whole of the circumstances. The fellow was at once discharged, but
before he left for Europe he wrote me a letter full of bitter reproach,
and expressed his determination to some day wreak vengeance upon me, as
well as upon a young Englishman whom he suspected that I loved. His
suspicions, however, were entirely unfounded. I, known at home and
throughout all our family by the pet name of `Tcherno-okaya,' or
`Sparkling Eyes,' a nickname taken from our Russian poet Lermontoff, had
met this young Englishman quite casually, when one day, while passing
through the Kasbah, I was insulted by two half-drunken Arabs, and he
escorted me home. Then, when we parted, he told me that he was staying
at the Hotel de la Regence, opposite the great white mosque, and gave me
his name. It was Dudley Ogle."