At nine o’clock the long train came to a standstill, seventeen minutes
late at Luga, and ample time was allowed for a leisurely breakfast in
the buffet of the station. The restaurant was thronged with numerous
passengers, most of whom seemed hardly yet awake, while many were
unkempt and dishevelled, as if they had had little sleep during the
night.
Jennie found a small table and sat down beside it, ordering her coffee
and rolls from the waiter who came to serve her. Looking round at the
cosmopolitan company, and listening to the many languages, whose clash
gave a Babel air to the restaurant, Jennie fell to musing on the strange
experiences she had encountered since leaving London. It seemed to her
she had been taking part in some ghastly nightmare, and she shuddered as
she thought of the lawlessness, under cover of law, of this great and
despotic empire, where even the ruler was under the surveillance of his
subordinates, and could not get a letter out of his own dominion in
safety, were he so minded. In her day-dream she became conscious,
without noting its application to herself, that a man was standing
before her table; then a voice which made her heart stop said,--
“Ah, lost Princess!”
She placed her hand suddenly to her throat, for the catch in her
breath seemed to be suffocating her, then looked up and saw Lord Donal
Stirling, in the ordinary everyday dress of an English gentleman, as
well groomed as if he had come, not from a train, but from his own
house. There was a kindly smile on his lips and a sparkle in his eyes,
but his face was of ghastly pallor.
“Oh, Lord Donal!” she cried, regarding him with eyes of wonder and fear,
“what is wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” the young man replied, with an attempt at a laugh; “nothing,
now that I have found you, Princess. I have been making a night of it,
that’s all, and am suffering the consequences in the morning. May I sit
down?”
He dropped into a chair on the other side of the table, like a man
thoroughly exhausted, unable to stand longer, and went on,--
“Like all dissipated men, I am going to break my fast on stimulants.
Waiter,” he said, “bring me a large glass of your best brandy.”
“And, waiter,” interjected Jennie in French, “bring two breakfasts. I
suppose it was not a meal that you ordered just now, Lord Donal?”
“I have ordered my breakfast,” he said; “still, it pleads in my favour
that I do not carry brandy with me, as I ought to do, and so must drink
the vile stuff they call their best here.”
“You should eat as well,” she insisted, taking charge of him as if she
had every right to do so.
“All shall be as you say, now that I have the happiness of seeing you
sitting opposite me, but don’t be surprised if I show a most
unappreciative appetite.”
“What is the matter?” she asked breathlessly. “You certainly look very
ill.”
“I have been drugged and robbed,” he replied, lowering his voice. “I
imagine I came to close quarters with death itself. I have spent a night
in Hades, and this morning am barely able to stagger; but the sight of
you, Princess--Ah, well, I feel once more that I belong to the land of
the living!”
“Please do not call me Princess,” said the girl, looking down at the
tablecloth.
“Then what am I to call you, Princess?”
“My name is Jennie Baxter,” she said in a low voice.
“_Miss_ Jennie Baxter?” he asked eagerly, with emphasis on the first
word.
“Miss Jennie Baxter,” she answered, still not looking up at him.
He leaned back in his chair and said,--
“Well, this is not such a bad world, after all. To think of meeting you
here in Russia! Have you been in St. Petersburg, then?”
“Yes. I am a newspaper woman,” explained Jennie hurriedly. “When
you met me before, I was there surreptitiously--fraudulently, if
you like; I was there to--to write a report of it for my paper. I
can never thank you enough, Lord Donal, for your kindness to me that
evening.”
“Your thanks are belated,” said the young man, with a visible attempt at
gaiety. “You should have written and acknowledged the kindness you are
good enough to say I rendered to you. You knew my address, and etiquette
demanded that you should make your acknowledgments.”
“I was reluctant to write,” said Jennie, a smile hovering round her
lips, “fearing my letter might act as a clue. I had no wish to interfere
with the legitimate business of Mr. Cadbury Taylor.”
“Great heavens!” cried the young man, “how came you to know about that?
But of course the Princess von Steinheimer told you of it. She wrote to
me charging me with all sorts of wickedness for endeavouring to find
you.”
“No, Lord Donal, I did not learn it from her. In fact, if you had opened
the door of the inner room at Mr. Cadbury Taylor’s a little quicker, you
would have come upon me, for I was the assistant who tried to persuade
him that you really met the Princess von Steinheimer.”
Lord Donal, for the first time, laughed heartily.
“Well, if that doesn’t beat all! And I suppose Cadbury Taylor hasn’t the
slightest suspicion that you are the person he was looking for?”
“No, not the slightest.”
“I say! that is the best joke I have heard in ten years,” said Lord
Donal; and here, breakfast arriving, Jennie gave him his directions.
“You are to drink a small portion of that brandy,” she said, “and then
put the rest in your coffee. You must eat a good breakfast, and that
will help you to forget your troubles,--that is, if you have any real
troubles.”
“Oh, my troubles are real enough,” said the young man. “When I met you
before, Princess, I was reasonably successful. We even talked about
ambassadorships, didn’t we, in spite of the fact that ambassadors were
making themselves unnecessarily obtrusive that night? Now you see before
you a ruined man. No, I am not joking; it is true. I was given a
commission, or, rather, knowing the danger there was in it, I begged
that the commission might be given me. It was merely to take a letter
from St. Petersburg to London. I have failed, and when that is said, all
is said.”
“But surely,” cried the girl, blushing guiltily as she realized that
this was the man she had been sent to rob, “you could not be expected to
ward off such a lawless attempt at murder as you have been the victim
of?”
“That is just what I expected, and what I supposed I could ward off. In
my profession--which, after all has a great similarity to yours, except
that I think we have to do more lying in ours--there must be no such
word as fail. The very best excuses are listened to with tolerance,
perhaps, and a shrug of the shoulders; but failure, no matter from what
cause, is fell doom. I have failed. I shall not make any excuses. I will
go to London and say merely, ‘The Russian police have robbed me.’ Oh, I
know perfectly well who did the trick, and how it was done. Then I shall
send in my resignation. They will accept it with polite words of regret,
and will say to each other, ‘Poor fellow, he had a brilliant career
before him, but he got drunk, or something, and fell into the ditch.’
Ah, well, we won’t talk any more about it.”
“Then you don’t despise the newspaper profession, Lord Donal?”
“Despise it! Bless you, no: I look up to it. Belonging myself to a
profession very much lower down in the scale of morality, as I have
said. But, Princess,” he added, leaning towards her, “will you resign
from the newspaper if I resign from diplomacy?”
The girl slowly shook her head, her eyes on the tablecloth before her.
“I will telegraph my resignation,” he said impetuously, “if you will
telegraph yours to your paper.”
“You are feeling ill and worried this morning, Lord Donal, and so you
take a pessimistic view of life. You must not resign.”
“Oh, but I must. I have failed, and that is enough.”
“It isn’t enough. You must do nothing until you reach London.”
“I like your word _must_, Jennie,” said the young man audaciously. “It
implies something, you know.”
“What does it imply, Lord Donal?” she asked, glancing up at him.
“It implies that you are going to leave the ‘Lord’ off my name.”
“That wouldn’t be very difficult,” replied Jennie.
“I am delighted to hear you say so,” exclaimed his lordship; “and now,
that I may know how it sounds from your dear lips, call me Don.”
“No; if I ever consented to omit the title, I should call you Donal. I
like the name in its entirety.”
He reached his hand across the table. “Are you willing then, to accept a
man at the very lowest ebb of his fortunes? I know that if I were of
the mould that heroes are made of, I would hesitate to proffer you a
blighted life. But I loved you the moment I saw you; and, remembering my
fruitless search for you, I cannot run the risk of losing you again; I
have not the courage.”
She placed her hand in his and looked him, for the first time, squarely
in the eyes.
“Are you sure, Donal,” she said, “that I am not a mere effigy on which
you are hanging the worn-out garments of a past affection? You thought I
was the Princess at first.”
“No, I didn’t,” he protested. “As soon as I heard you speak, I knew you
were the one I was destined to meet.”
“Ah, Donal, Donal, at lovers’ perjuries they say Jove laughs. I don’t
think you were quite so certain as all that. But I, too, am a coward,
and I dare not refuse you.”
Lord Donal glanced quickly about him; the room was still crowded. Even
the Berlin Express gave them a long time for breakfast, and was in no
hurry to move westward. His hurried gaze returned to her and he sighed.
“What an unholy spot for a proposal!” he whispered; “and yet they call
Russia the Great Lone Land. Oh, that we had a portion of it entirely to
ourselves!”
The girl sat there, a smile on her pretty lips that Lord Donal thought
most tantalizing. A railway official announced in a loud voice that the
train was about to resume its journey. There was a general shuffling of
feet as the passengers rose to take their places.
“Brothers and sisters kiss each other, you know, on the eve of a railway
journey,” said Lord Donal, taking advantage of the confusion.
Jennie Baxter made no protest.
“There is plenty of time,” he whispered. “I know the leisurely nature of
Russian trains. Now I am going to the telegraph office, to send in my
resignation, and I want you to come with me and send in yours.”
“No, Lord Donal,” said the girl.
“Aren’t you going to resign?” he asked, in surprise.
“Yes, all in good time; but _you_ are not.”
“Oh, I say,” he cried, “it is really imperative. I’ll tell you all about
it when we get on the train.”
“It is really imperative that you should not send in your resignation.
Indeed, Donal, you need not look at me with that surprised air. You may
as well get accustomed to dictation at once. You did it yourself, you
know. You can’t say that I encouraged you. I eluded the vigilant Cadbury
Taylor as long as I could. But, if there is time, go to the telegraph
office and send a message to the real Princess, Palace Steinheimer,
Vienna. Say you are engaged to be married to Jennie Baxter, and ask her
to telegraph you her congratulations at Berlin.”
“I’ll do it,” replied the young man with gratifying alacrity.
When Lord Donal came out of the telegraph office, Jennie said to him,
“Wait a moment while I go into the sleeping car and get my rugs and
handbag.”
“I’ll go for them,” he cried impetuously.
“Oh, no,” she said. “I’ll tell you why, later. The conductor is a
villain and was in collusion with the police.”
“Oh, I know that,” said Lord Donal. “Poor devil, he can’t help himself;
he must do what the police order him to do, while he is in Russia.”
“I’ll get my things and go into an ordinary first class carriage. When I
pass this door, you must get your belongings and come and find me. There
is still time, and I don’t want the conductor to see us together.”
“Very well,” said the young man with exemplary obedience.