LATE in the evening of the same day two of the President’s
audience--the only two who had heard his words with anger and
hatred instead of gratitude and joy--were together in a small but
luxuriously-furnished room, in an octagonal turret which rose from one
of the angles of a large house on the southern slope of the heights of
Hampstead.
One was a very old man, whose once giant frame was wasted and shrunken
by the slow siege of many years, and on whose withered, care-lined
features death had already set its fatal seal. The other was a young
girl, in all the pride and glory of budding womanhood, and beautiful
with the dark, imperious beauty that is transmitted, like a priceless
heirloom, along a line of proud descent unstained by any drop of
base-born blood.
Yet in her beauty there was that which repelled as well as attracted.
No sweet and gentle woman-soul looked out of the great, deep eyes,
that changed from dusky-violet to the blackness of a starless night as
the sun and shade of her varying moods swept over her inner being. Her
straight, dark brows were almost masculine in their firmness; and the
voluptuous promise of her full, red, sensuous lips was belied by the
strength of her chin and the defiant poise of her splendid head on the
strongly-moulded throat, whose smooth skin showed so dazzlingly white
against the dark purple velvet of the collar of her dress.
It was a beauty to enslave and command rather than to woo and win; the
fatal loveliness of a Cleopatra, a Lucrezia, or a Messalina; a charm to
be used for evil rather than for good. In a few years she would be such
a woman as would drive men mad for the love of her, and, giving no love
in return, use them for her own ends, and cast them aside with a smile
when they could serve her no longer.
The old man was lying on a low couch of magnificent furs, against whose
dark lustre the grey pallor of his skin and the pure, silvery whiteness
of his still thick hair and beard showed up in strong contrast. He
had been asleep for the last four hours, resting after the exertion
of going to the cathedral, and the girl was sitting watching him with
anxious eyes, every now and then leaning forward to catch the faint
sound of his slow and even breathing, and make sure that he was still
alive.
A clock in one of the corners of the room chimed a quarter to nine,
as the old man raised his hand to his brow and opened his eyes. They
rested for a moment on the girl’s face, and then wandered inquiringly
about the room, as though he expected someone else to be present. Then
he said in a low, weak voice--
“What time is it? Has Serge come yet?”
“No,” said the girl, glancing up at the clock; “that was only a quarter
to nine, and he is not due until the hour.”
“No; I remember. I don’t suppose he can be here much before. Meanwhile
get me the draught ready, so that I shall have strength to do what has
to be done before”--
“Are you sure it is necessary for you to take that terrible drug? Why
should you sacrifice what may be months or even years of life, to gain
a few hours’ renewed youth?”
The girl’s voice trembled as she spoke, and her eyes melted in a sudden
rush of tears. The one being that she loved in all the world was this
old man, and he had just told her to prepare his death-draught.
“Do as I bid you, child,” he said, raising his voice to a querulous
cry, “and do it quickly, while there is yet time. Why do you talk to me
of a few more months of life--to me, whose eyes have seen the snows
of a hundred winters whitening the earth? I tell you that, drug or no
drug, I shall not see the setting of to-morrow’s sun. As I slept, I
heard the rush of the death-angel’s wings through the night, and the
wind of them was cold upon my brow. Do as I bid you, quick--there is
the door-telephone. Serge is here!”
As he spoke, a ring sounded in the lower part of the house. Accustomed
to blind obedience from her infancy, the girl choked back her rising
tears and went to a little cupboard let into the wall, out of which she
took two small vials, each containing about a fluid ounce of colourless
liquid. She placed a tumbler in the old man’s hand, and emptied the
vials into it simultaneously.
There was a slight effervescence, and the two colourless liquids
instantly changed to deep red. The moment that they did so, the dying
man put the glass to his lips and emptied it at a gulp. Then he threw
himself back upon his pillows, and let the glass fall from his hand
upon the floor. At the same moment a little disc of silver flew out at
right angles to the wall near the door, and a voice said--
“Serge Nicholaivitch is here to command.”
“Serge Nicholaivitch is welcome. Let him ascend!” said the girl,
walking towards the transmitter, and replacing the disc as she ceased
speaking.
A few moments later there was a tap on the door. The girl opened
it and admitted a tall, splendidly-built young fellow of about
twenty-two, dressed, according to the winter costume of the time, in
a close-fitting suit of dark-blue velvet, long boots of soft, brown
leather that came a little higher than the knee, and a long, fur-lined,
hooded cloak, which was now thrown back, and hung in graceful folds
from his broad shoulders.
As he entered, the girl held out her hand to him in silence. A bright
flush rose to her clear, pale cheeks as he instantly dropped on one
knee and kissed it, as in the old days a favoured subject would have
kissed the hand of a queen.
“Welcome, Serge Nicholaivitch, Prince of the House of Romanoff! Your
bride and your crown are waiting for you!”
The words came clear and strong from the lips which, but a few minutes
before, had barely been able to frame a coherent sentence. The strange
drug had wrought a miracle of restoration. Fifty years seemed to have
been lifted from the shoulders of the man who would never see another
sunrise.
The light of youth shone in his eyes, and the flush of health on
his cheeks. The deep furrows of age and care had vanished from his
face, and, saving only for his long, white hair, if one who had seen
Alexander Romanoff, the last of the Tsars of Russia, on the battlefield
of Muswell Hill could have come back to earth, he would have believed
that he saw him once more in the flesh.
Without any assistance he rose from the couch, and drew himself up to
the full of his majestic height. As he did so the young man dropped
on his knee before him, as he had done before the girl, and said in
Russian--
“The honour is too great for my unworthiness. May heaven make me worthy
of it!”
“Worthy you are now, and shall remain so long as you shall keep
undefiled the faith and honour of the Imperial House from which you are
sprung,” replied the old man in the same language, raising him from his
knee as he spoke. Then he laid his hands on the young man’s shoulders,
and, looking him straight in the eyes, went on--
“Serge Nicholaivitch, you know why I have bidden you come here
to-night. Speak now, without fear or falsehood, and tell me whether you
come prepared to take that which I have to give you, and to do that
which I shall ask of you. If there is any doubt in your soul, speak it
now and go in peace; for the task that I shall lay upon you is no light
one, nor may it be undertaken without a whole heart and a soul that is
undivided by doubt.”
The young man returned his burning gaze with a glance as clear and
steady as his own, and replied--
“It is for your Majesty to give and for me to take--for you to command
and for me to obey. Tell me your will, and I will do it to the death.
In the hour that I fail, may heaven’s mercy fail me too, and may I die
as one who is not fit to live!”
“Spoken like a true son of Russia!” said the old man, taking his hands
from his shoulders and beckoning the girl to his side. Then he placed
them side by side before an _ikon_ fastened to the eastern wall, with
an ever-burning lamp in front of it. He bade them kneel down and join
hands, and as they did so he took his place behind them and, raising
his hands as though in invocation above their heads, he said in slow,
solemn tones--
“Now, Serge Nicholaivitch and Olga Romanoff, sole heirs on earth of
those who once were Tsars of Russia, swear before heaven and all its
holy saints that, when this body of mine shall have been committed to
the flames, you will take my ashes to Petersburg and lay them in the
Church of Peter and Paul, and that when that is done, you will go to
the Lossenskis at Moscow, and there, in the Uspènski Sobōr, where your
ancestors were crowned, take each other for wedded wife and husband,
according to the ancient laws of Russia and the rites of the orthodox
church.”
The oath was taken by each of the now betrothed pair in turn, and then
Paul Romanoff, great-grandson of Alexander, the Last of the Tsars,
raised them from their knees and kissed each of them on the forehead.
Then, taking from his neck a gold chain with a small key attached to
it, he went to one of the oak panels, from which the walls of the room
were lined, and pushed aside a portion of the apparently solid beading,
disclosing a keyhole into which he inserted the key.
He turned the key and pulled, and the panel swung slowly out like a
door. It was lined with three inches of solid steel, and behind it was
a cavity in the wall, from which came the sheen of gold and the gleam
of jewels. A cry of amazement broke at the same moment from the lips of
both Olga and Serge, as they saw what the glittering object was.
Paul Romanoff took it out of the steel-lined cavity, and laid it
reverently on the table, saying, as he did so--
“To-morrow I shall be dead, and this house and all that is in it will
be yours. There is my most precious possession, the Imperial crown
of Russia, stolen when the Kremlin was plundered in the days of the
Terror, and restored secretly to my father by the faith and devotion of
one of the few who remained loyal after the fall of the Empire.
“In a few hours it will be yours. I leave it to you as a sacred
heritage from the past for you to hand on to the future, and with it
you shall receive and hand on a heritage of hate and vengeance, which
you shall keep hot in your hearts and in the hearts of your children
against the day of reckoning when it comes.
“Now sit down on the divan yonder, and listen with your ears and your
hearts as well, for these are the last words that I shall speak with
the lips of flesh, and you must remember them, that you may tell them
to your children, and perchance to their children after them, as I
now tell them to you; for the hour of vengeance may not come in your
day nor yet in theirs, though in the fulness of time it shall surely
come, and therefore the story must never be forgotten while a Romanoff
remains to remember it.”
The old man, on whom the strange drug that he had taken was still
exercising its wonderful effects, threw himself into an easy-chair
as he spoke, and motioned them with his hand towards a second low
couch against one of the walls, covered with cushions and draped with
neutral-tinted, silken hangings.
Olga, moving, as it seemed, with the unconscious motion of a
somnambulist, allowed her form to sink back upon the cushions until
she half sat and half reclined on them; and Serge, laying one of the
cushions on the floor, sat at her feet, and drew one of her hands
unresistingly over his shoulder, and kept it there as though she were
caressing him. Thus they waited for Paul Romanoff to teach them the
lesson that they had sworn to teach in turn to the generations that
were to come.
The old man regarded them in silence for a moment or two, and as he did
so the angry fire died out of his eyes, and his lips parted in a faint
smile as he said, rather in soliloquy to himself than to them--
“As it was in the beginning, it is now and for ever shall be until the
end! Empires wax and wane, and dynasties rise and fall! Revolutions
come and go, and the face of the world is changed, but the mystery of
the sex, the beauty of woman, and the love of man, endure changeless as
Destiny, for they are Destiny itself!”
As he spoke, the fixed, rigid look melted from Olga’s face. The bright
flush rose again to her cheeks, and she bowed her royal head, and
looked almost tenderly at the blond, ruddy, young giant at her feet.
After all, he was her fate, and she might well have had a worse one.
Then after a brief pause, Paul Romanoff began to speak again, slowly
and quietly, with his eyes fixed on the glittering symbol of the
vanished sovereignty of his House, as though he were addressing it, and
communing with the mournful memories that it recalled from the past.
“It is a hundred and twenty-five years since the hand of Natas, the
Jew, came forth out of the unknown, and struck you from the brow of the
Last of the Tsars. On the day that Natas died, I was born, a hundred
years ago. There are barely a score of men left on earth who have seen
and spoken with the men who saw the Great Revolt and the beginning
of the Terror, and I alone, of the elder line of Romanoff, remain to
pass the story of our House’s shame and ruin on, so that it may not be
forgotten against the day of vengeance, that I have waited for in vain.
“But I have no time left for dreams or vain regrets. Listen, Children
of the Present, and take my words with you into the future that it is
not given to me to see.”
He passed his hands upwards over his eyes and brow, and then went on,
speaking now directly to Olga and Serge, in a quick, earnest tone, as
though he feared that his fictitious strength would fail him before he
could say what he had to say--
“When Alexander, the last of the crowned Emperors of Russia, fell down
dead on the morning after he reached the mines of Kara, to which the
Terrorists had exiled him as a convict for life, those who remained
of his family, and who had taken no part in the war, were allowed to
return to Europe, on condition that they lived the lives of private
citizens and sought no share in the government of any country to which
they were allied by marriage or otherwise.
“Only two of those who had survived the march to Siberia were able to
avail themselves of this permission, and these were Olga, the daughter
of Alexander, and Serge Nicholaivitch, the youngest son of his nephew
Nicholas. These two settled at the Court of Denmark, and there, two
years later, Olga married Prince Ingeborg. Her first-born son, the only
one of her children who lived beyond infancy, was my father, as my own
first-born son was yours, Olga Romanoff.
“Serge married Dagmar, the youngest daughter of the House of Denmark,
three years later, and from him you, Serge Nicholaivitch, are descended
in the fourth generation. Thus in you will be united the only two
remaining branches of the once mighty House of Romanoff. May the day
come when, in you or your children, its ancient glories shall be
restored!”
“Amen!” said Olga and Serge in a single breath, and as she uttered
the words, Olga’s eyes fell on the lost crown upon the table, and for
the moment they seemed to flame with the inner fires of a quenchless
rage. Paul Romanoff’s eyes answered hers flash for flash, for the same
hatred and longing for revenge possessed them both--the old man who had
carried the weight of a hundred years to the brink of the grave, and
the young girl whose feet were still lingering on the dividing line
between girlhood and womanhood.
Then he went on, speaking with an added tone of fierceness in his
voice--
“From the day of my birth until this, the night of my death, it has
been impossible to do anything to recover that which was lost in the
Great Revolt. Not that stout hearts and keen brains and willing hands
have been wanting for the work; but because the strong arm of the
Terror has encircled the earth with unbreakable bonds; because its eye
has never slept; and because its hand has hurled infallible destruction
upon all who have dared to take the first step towards freedom.
“Natas spoke truly when he said that the Terrorists had ruled the world
by force, and Alan Arnold to-day spoke truly after him when he said
that the supremacy of the Aerians was based upon the force that they
could bring to bear upon any who revolted against them, through their
possession of the empire of the air.
“It is this priceless possession that gives them the command of the
world, and for a hundred years they have guarded it so jealously, that
they have slain without mercy all who have ventured to take even the
first step towards an independent solution of the mighty problem which
Richard Arnold solved a hundred and twenty-six years ago.
“The last man who died in this cause was my only son, and your father,
Olga. Remember that, for it is not the least item in the legacy of
revenge that I bequeath to you to-night. He had devoted his life, as
many others had done before him, to the task of discovering the secret
of the motive power of the Terrorists’ air-ships.
“The year you were born, success had crowned the efforts of ten years
of tireless labour. Working with the utmost secrecy in a lonely hut
buried in the forests of Norway, he and six others, who were, as he
thought, devoted to him and the glorious cause of wresting the empire
of the world from the grasp of the Terrorists, had built an air-ship
that would have been swifter and more powerful than any of their aerial
fleet.
“Two days before she was ready to take the air, one of his men
deserted. The traitor was never seen again, but the next night a
Terrorist vessel descended from the clouds, and in a few minutes not
a vestige of our air-ship or her creators remained. Only a blackened
waste in the midst of the forest was left to show the scene of their
labours. Within forty-eight hours, it was known all over the civilised
world that Vladimir Romanoff and his associates had been killed by
order of the Supreme Council, for endeavouring to build an air-ship in
defiance of its commands.
[Illustration: NOT A VESTIGE OF OUR AIR-SHIP OR HER CREATORS REMAINED.
_Page 22._]
“Such are the enemies against whom you will have to contend. They are
still virtually the masters of the world, and the task before you
is to wrest that mastery from them. It is no light task, but it is not
impossible; for these Aerians are, after all, but men and women as you
are, and what they have done, other men and women can surely do.
“The Great Secret cannot always remain theirs alone. While they
actively controlled the nations, nothing could be done against them,
for their hand was everywhere and their eyes saw everything. But now
they have abdicated the throne of the world, and left the nations to
rule themselves as they can. For a time things will go on in their
present grooves, but that will not be for long.
“I, who am their bitterest enemy on earth, am forced to confess that
the Terrorists have proved themselves to be the wisest as well as
the strongest of despots. Under their rule the world has become a
paradise--for the _canaille_ and the multitude. But they have curbed
the mob as well as the king, and abolished the demagogue as well as the
despot. Now the strong hand is lifted and the bridle loosed; and before
many years have passed, the brute strength of the multitude will have
begun to assert itself.
“The so-called kings of the earth, who rule now in a mockery of
royalty, will speedily find that the real kings of the old days ruled
because, in the last resource, they had armies and navies at their
command and could enforce obedience. These are but the puppets of
the popular will, and now that the moral and physical support of the
Supreme Council and its aerial fleet is taken from them, they will see
democracy run rampant, and, having no strength to stem the tide, they
will have to float with it or be submerged by it.
“In another generation the voice of the majority, the blind, brute
force of numbers, will rule everything on earth. What government there
may be, will be a mere matter of counting heads. Individual freedom
will by swift degrees vanish from the earth, and human society will
become a huge machine, grinding all men down to the same level until
the monotony of life becomes unendurable.
“Hitherto all democracies in the history of the world have been ended
by military despotisms, but now military despotism has been made
impossible, and so democracy will run riot, until it plunges the world
into social chaos.
“This may come in your time or in your children’s, but it is the
opportunity for which you must work and wait. Even now you will find in
every nation, thousands of men and women who are chafing against the
limitations imposed on individual aspirations and ambition; and as the
rule of democracy spreads and becomes heavier, the number of these will
increase, until at last revolt will become possible, nay, inevitable.
“Of this revolt you must make yourselves the guiding-spirits. The work
will be long and arduous, but you have all your lives before you, and
the reward of success will be glorious beyond all description.
“Not only will you restore the House of Romanoff to its ancient glories
in yourselves and your children, but you will enthrone it in an even
higher place than that which your ancestor had almost won for it, when
these thrice-accursed Terrorists turned the tide of battle against him
on the threshold of the conquest of the world.
“Do not shrink from the task, or despair because you are now only two
against the world. Think of Natas and the mighty work that he did, and
remember that he was once only one against the world which in the day
of battle he fought and conquered.
“Above all things, never let your eyes wander from the land of the
Aerians. That once conquered and the world is yours to do with as
you will. To do that, you must first conquer the air as they have
done. Aeria itself, by all reports, is such a paradise as the sun
nowhere else shines upon. Some day, whether by force or cunning, it
may be yours; and when it is, the world also will be yours to be your
footstool and your plaything, and all the peoples of the earth shall be
your servants to do your bidding.
“Yes, I can see, through the mists of the coming years and beyond the
grave that opens at my feet, aerial navies, flying the Eagle of Russia
and scaling the mighty battlements of Aeria, hurling their lightnings
far and wide in the work of vengeance long delayed! Behind the battle,
I see darkness that my weak eyes cannot pierce, but yours shall see
clearly where mine are clouded with the falling mists of death.
“The shadows are closing round me, and the sands in the glass are
almost run out. Yet one thing remains to be done. Since Alexander
Romanoff died at the mines of Kara, no Tsar of Russia has been crowned.
Now I, Paul Romanoff, his rightful heir, will crown myself after the
fashion of my ancestors, and then I will crown you, the daughter of my
murdered son, and you will place the diadem on your husband’s brow when
God has made you one!”
So saying, the old man rose from his seat, with his face flushed and
his eyes aglow with the light of ecstasy. Olga and Serge rose to
their feet, half in fear and half in wonder, as they looked upon his
transfigured countenance.
He lifted the Imperial crown from the table, and then, drawing himself
up to the full height of his majestic stature, raised it high above his
head, and lowered it slowly down towards his brow.
The jewelled circlet of gold had almost touched the silver of his snowy
hair when the light suddenly died out of his eyes, leaving the glaze
of death behind it. He gasped once for breath, and then his mighty
form shrank together and pitched forward in a huddled heap at their
feet, flinging the crown with a dull crash to the floor, and sending it
rolling away into a corner of the room.
“God grant that may not be an omen, Olga!” said Serge, covering his
eyes with his hands to shut out the sudden horror of the sight.
“Omen or not, I will do his bidding to the end,” said the girl slowly
and solemnly. Then her pent-up passion of grief burst forth in a long,
wailing cry, and she flung herself down on the prostrate form of the
only friend she had ever known and loved, and laid her cheek upon his,
and let the welling tears run from her eyes over those that had for
ever ceased to weep.