As Julian Estcourt's eyes closed, it seemed to him that with a sudden
sharp spasm of pain he tore himself away from that sleeping sentient
portion of humanity which was his representation, and then, without
effort or consciousness of his own, he seemed floating swiftly along
over a dark and misty space. A great sea tossed and moaned beneath him.
He felt that someone was beside him, but he had no desire to question
its personality. Now and then lights flashed through the dusky shadows
which enveloped him, and as they flashed he saw vivid pictures of plains
and cities and mountains.
Over one such city, bathed in the clear lucid flame of the full moon, he
seemed to pause. He saw bridges, piles of buildings, dark flowing
canals, a strange medley of streets, some broad and beautiful, others
dark, narrow and pestilential, reeking with the fumes of dram-shops.
There was snow on the ground, sleighs were gliding swiftly to and fro.
People spoke but seldom; an air of restraint, of fear, of rebellion
impressed him, as the furtive glances and brief whispers became pregnant
with meaning.
Gradually, as he moved through the hurrying crowd, he was conscious of a
name constantly on their lips. It was muttered by the voices of tipsy
men reeling from their vile dens of intoxication, by the lips of painted
women as they drew their furs around their tawdry finery, by the
artisans with their pinched faces and hungry eyes, by all the classes to
whom life is a bitter struggle with poverty and necessity.
To and fro he seemed to move, without haste, and yet with the rapidity
of thought. In the magnificence of gilded saloons, in the snow-covered
street, in the haunts of poverty and vice, always and always that one
word was tossed to and fro in every accent of hate and opprobrium. And
when in wonder he turned to the shape floating still beside him, and
would have questioned the meaning of that word, it stayed the question
on his lips with a mute gesture of silence.
Then, strange to say, he seemed to gather into his own consciousness a
sense of deep implacable hatred. A hatred that thrilled the air as with
poisoned breath, and beat in the pulses of living men to whom existence
was brutalised by tyranny and vice. The sense of this awful murderous
Hate, at last grew terrible as a burden, so fully and consciously did he
recognise it, so clearly did he see of what it was capable, and so
mysteriously did it seem to breathe about the very air through which he
moved.
It filled the pulses of the night with a horror from which he shrank
aghast, it stretched a blood-red hand over the white drifts of unsullied
snow, it painted out the brilliant hues of luxury, and threw yet darker
shadows over the sad homes of want and misery and crime.
And more and more he strained every nerve to catch the meaning of that
word which was its embodiment, and again and again he failed.
Suddenly the scene changed. He was in a poor chamber, barely and
miserably furnished. It lay in the centre of a pile of buildings facing
a half-frozen canal. It seemed to him that the building consisted of
hosts of small tenements, all swarming with human life, but he had
passed up the common stairway seemingly unnoticed, and entered this
special room.
It was tenanted by two people. An old woman of some three-score years,
with a thin worn face and grey hair banded over her hollow temples. She
was thinly clad, and had an old tippet of yellow fur over her shoulders.
She sat near the stove. Before her stood a young man in the dress of a
Petersburg student. They were talking low and earnestly. Again that
word reached him, again the full sense of its meaning eluded his grasp.
Suddenly the comprehension of the scene became clear to him. He saw
they were mother and son, that he was relating some incident to her with
a suppressed enthusiasm that yet made itself audible in his deep,
thrilling tone, and visible in the glow and sparkle of his eye.
"She is an angel," he said at last. "We do well to trust her--but what
a risk, think of it, mother--five hundred lives, and only a few hours to
decide their fate."
The woman's face grew white, her feeble limbs shivered as with an ague
fit. "My son," she moaned, "my only one--and you, too, may be
sacrificed. Oh, unhappy country, unhappy fate that makes it ours! But
you are right. The Princess is an angel of goodness; she will save us.
She has said it."
They both turned involuntarily towards a small image, before which a
lamp burned. He saw them kneel hand in hand before it; then the room
faded into darkness--he was in another place now.
A sense of luxury, of perfume, of dreamy warmth, and then he saw,
opening before him in a vista of exquisite colour, a suite of softly
lighted chambers. They seemed to glow like jewels, each perfect in the
richness and loveliness of its setting, and at the farthest end of one
of them a woman reclined on a couch of white furs. She was wrapped in a
loose gown of thick white silk, bordered also with snowy fur, and her
lovely hair was unbound, and fell in a long trail of dusky splendour
over the colourless purity of her surroundings.
Her eyes were wide open, and full of a fear that was almost horror, and,
as if to account for it, he seemed suddenly to hear, coming through the
fragrant stillness of those virginal chambers, the dull heavy step of a
man. She raised herself on one lovely bare arm, her hand went to her
heart, then slowly her eyes were upraised as if in some dumb prayer for
strength. A strange frozen calm came over the perfect features. The
face looked as if carved in marble.
Nearer and nearer came the heavy step, reeling and uncertain now, yet
stumbling with drunken obstinacy towards some goal to which the leaden
senses pointed their brutal desires.
Up to this time, Julian Estcourt had only been conscious of a passive
blind submission to the force controlling him; but now power seemed to
thrill him, desire seemed struggling to life, the will awakened from its
lethargy, and a god-like strength and force seemed to spring into life,
held in check but for a moment, as the increased vigilance of sense bade
him watch yet a little longer.
With breath reeking of drink, with bloodshot eyes and reeling step, the
satyr entered. Yet so great was the spell and charm of that womanly
purity and dauntless pride, that even lust and tyranny sank abashed on
the threshold, and a certain shame and hesitancy were visible in the
flushed face and bloodshot eyes.
"Why are you here?" asked the woman calmly. "Have you mistaken your
way?"
"No,"--and the intruder advanced with sudden boldness. "I have come to
ask if you are still of the same mind--still intent on destroying your
_friends_." His laugh rang out mockingly. "Fine friends truly for a
Princess Zairoff. I gave you till to-night--come, which is to be
sacrificed--your womanly scruples, or the five hundred lives you have
fooled into security?"
Then she sprang to her feet, a statue no longer, but a living,
passionate woman.
"I have borne enough," she cried. "Beware how you tempt the power that
has been strong enough to keep me from you all these years. Beware,
too, how, once again, you stain your soul with innocent blood.
Thousands of voices are crying against you even now. Thousands of years
of suffering on your part will not avail to buy you peace in the future.
I have prayed for these unfortunates, I have begged their lives at your
hands on my very knees. Do not tempt me too far. I say again--you do
not know what it is you do."
He laughed brutally. "I know," he said, "that you shall pay for their
lives, or sacrifice them. I have waited long enough. I am sick of
hearing men rave about your beauty, and feeling that that beauty is no
more to me than if I were a beggar at my own gates."
"Do you forget," she said solemnly, "the compact we made? I am not at
any man's choice, or disposal. My life has a mission to accomplish, and
you, with all your brutal desires and evil passions, cannot turn that
life from its destined purpose. Do not forget the warnings you have
already received."
So beautiful she looked, standing there in her floating, snowy
draperies, with her solemn, mysterious eyes fixed upon that sullen,
lowering face. Beautiful and mysterious as some vestal priestess
defending the secrets of her Order. But that beauty, for once, seemed
less to subjugate than to inflame the evil desires of that lower nature
to which it was bound.
"I will listen no more to vague threats," he said fiercely. "I have
paid a heavy enough price for you. I mean to enjoy my purchase. See,
here is the list--they are fairly trapped--a word from you and they are
safe--these impatient fools. Keep silence--and the knout, the mines,
the slow torturing death of Siberia, awaits them all. Now, once again--
your answer?"
He drew nearer--his eyes aflame--his arms outstretched.
Then a change, wild and fearful, as that of the tropical tornado to a
southern landscape, swept over that lovely form.
Her eyes flashed, her figure seemed to dilate. Slowly she raised her
arm and stretched it towards that brutal ravisher...
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Struggling, panting, tearing, as it were, against a power that bade him
hearken to that terrible answer, Julian Estcourt cried or seemed to cry
aloud in an agony of entreaty.
Then a rushing noise as of an unloosed torrent was in his ears; a dull,
confused pain beat like clanging hammers in his brain.
His eyes opened and he found himself, bathed in the cold sweat of more
than mortal terror, lying face downwards on the floor of his own
bedroom.
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In a blind, dazed fashion he struggled to his feet and rushed to the
window and let the cool night air blow over his face. Every limb was
trembling; he could not think with any clearness.
In some dim, unconscious fashion he groped for his watch, found it, and
looked at the time. A quarter-past one. Only an hour had passed--an
hour--and he felt as if centuries had swept over his head in the vivid
horrors of that awful dream.
"But it was only a dream," he cried aloud, drawing in deep panting
breaths of the pine-scented air. "Oh! thank God. Thank God, it was
only a dream!"
And he sank on his knees and sobbed like a child in the star-lit
solitude of the night.