WHEN Olga went to her room that night in St. Petersburg, instead of
going to bed, she unpacked from her valise a series of articles which
seemed strange possessions for a young girl of not quite seventeen to
travel with on her wedding journey.
First came a tiny spirit furnace from which, by the aid of an
arrangement something like the modern blow-pipe, an intense heat could
be obtained. Then a delicate pair of scales, a glass pestle and mortar,
and a couple of glass liquid-measures, and lastly, half a dozen little
phials filled with variously-coloured liquids, and as many little
packets of powders, that looked like herbs ground very finely.
When she had placed these out on the table, after having carefully
locked the door of her room, and seen that the windows were completely
shuttered and curtained, she drew from the bosom of her dress a gold
chain, at the end of which was fastened, together with the key of
the secret recess in the wall of the turret chamber of the house at
Hampstead, a small bag of silk, out of which she took a little roll
of parchment,--the slip which she had abstracted from Paul Romanoff’s
secret will after she had persuaded Serge, with her false kisses, to
leave her alone for a while.
She seated herself at the table, drew the electric reading-lamp which
stood on it close to her, laid the slip down in front of her, keeping
it unrolled by means of a couple of little weights, and studied it
intently for several minutes. Then she made a series of calculations
on another sheet of paper, and compared the result carefully with some
figures on the slip.
She made them three times over before she was satisfied that they were
absolutely correct, and then, with all the care and deliberation of
a chemical analyst performing a delicate and important experiment,
she proceeded to weigh out tiny quantities of the powders, and to mix
them very carefully in the little glass mortar. This done, she emptied
the mixture into a little platinum crucible, which she placed on the
furnace, at the same time applying a gentle heat.
Then she turned her attention to the phials, measuring off quantities
of their contents with the most scrupulous exactitude, mixing them two
and two, and adding this mixture to a third, and so on, in a certain
order which was evidently prearranged, as she constantly referred to
the slip of parchment and her own calculations as she was mixing them.
By the time she finished this part of her work, she had obtained from
the various coloured liquids one perfectly colourless and odourless, of
a specific gravity apparently considerably in excess of that of water,
although, at the same time, it was extremely mobile and refractive.
She held it up to the light, looking at it with her eyelids somewhat
screwed up, and with a cruel smile on her pretty lips.
“So far, so good,” she said in a voice little higher than a whisper.
“The lives of fifty strong men in that couple of ounces of harmless
looking fluid! If anyone could see me just now, I fancy they would take
me rather for a witch or a poisoner of the fifteenth century than for a
girl of the twenty-first.
“Well, my friend Alan, your mysterious power may kill more quickly,
but not more surely than this; and this, too, will take a man out of
the world so easily that not even he himself will know that he is
going,--not even when he sinks into the sleep from which he will awake
on the other side of the shadows.
“So much for the bodies of our enemies, and now for their souls! I
don’t want to kill wholesale, at least, not just yet; and as for you,
my Alan, you are far too splendid, too glorious a man to be killed, to
say nothing of your being so much more useful alive. No, I have a very
much pleasanter fate in store for you.”
Just then a little cloud as of incense smoke began to rise from the
crucible in which were the mixed powders, and a faint, pleasant perfume
began to diffuse itself. She stopped her soliloquy, measured off
exactly half of the liquid, and patiently poured it, drop by drop, into
the crucible, at the same time gradually increasing the heat.
The vapour gradually disappeared, and the perfume died away. When she
had poured in the last drop, she began slowly stirring the mixture
with a glass rod. It gradually assumed the consistency of thick syrup,
and after stirring it for three minutes by her watch, which lay on the
table beside her, she extinguished the electric lamp and waited.
In a few seconds a pale, orange-coloured flame appeared hovering over
the crucible. As its ghostly light fell upon her anxious features, she
caught sight of herself in a mirror let into the wall on the opposite
side of the table. She started back in her chair with an irrepressible
shudder. For the first time in her life she saw herself as she really
was.
The weird, unearthly light of the flame changed the clear, pale olive
of her skin into a sallow red, and cast what looked like a mist of
vapour tinged with blood across the dark lustre of her dusky eyes. It
seemed as though the light that she had called forth from the darkness
had melted the beautiful mask which hid her inner self from the eyes
of men, and revealed her naked soul incarnate in the evil shape that
should have belonged to it.
Suddenly the flame vanished, she turned on the switch of the lamp,
placed a platinum cover over the crucible with a pair of light, curved
tongs, and, with a quick half-turn, screwed it hermetically down. Then
she turned the heat of the furnace on to the full, rose from her chair,
and stretched herself, with her linked hands above her head, till her
lithe, girlish form was drawn up to its full height in front of the
mirror.
She looked dreamily from under her half-closed lids at the perfect
picture presented by the reflection, and then her tightly-closed lips
melted into a smile, and she said softly to herself--
“Ah, that is a different sort of picture. I wonder what Alan would
have thought if he could have seen _that_ one? I don’t think I should
have taken my trip in the air-ship to-morrow if he had done. Well, I
have seen myself as I am--what four generations of inherited hate and
longing for revenge have made me.
“In the light of that horrible flame I might have sat for the portrait
of the lost soul of Lucrezia Borghia. Ah, well, if mine is lost, it
shall be lost for something worth the exchange. ‘Better to rule in Hell
than serve in Heaven,’ as old Milton said, and after all--who knows?
“Bah! that is enough of dreaming, when the time for doing is so near. I
must get some sleep to-night, or my eyes will have lost some of their
brightness by to-morrow.”
So saying, she busied herself putting away her phials, and powders, and
apparatus. The half of the colourless liquid she had left she carefully
decanted into a tiny flask, over the stopper of which she screwed a
silver cap that had a little ring on the top, and this she hung on
the chain round her neck. She replaced the slip of parchment in its
silken bag, and carefully burnt the paper on which she had made her
calculations.
By this time the bottom of the crucible was glowing red hot. She noted
the time that had elapsed since she had screwed the cap down, waited
five minutes longer, and then extinguished the furnace, undressed, and
got into bed, and in half an hour was sleeping as quietly as a little
child. She had set the chime of her repeating watch to sound at six,
and hung the watch close above her head.
Calm as her sleep was at first, it was by no means dreamless, and her
dreams were well fitted to be those of a guilty soul slumbering after a
work of death.
She saw herself standing with Alan on the glass-domed deck of the
air-ship, beneath the light of a clear, white moon sailing high in the
heavens, and a host of brilliant stars glittering out of the deep-blue
depths beyond it. Far below them lay an unbroken cloud-sea of dazzling
whiteness, which stretched away into the infinite distance on all
sides, until it seemed to blend with the moonlight and melt into the
sky.
Then the scene changed, and the air-ship swept downwards in a wide,
spiral curve, and plunged through the noiseless billows of the shadowy
sea. As she did so, a fearful chorus of sounds rose up from the earth
below.
The moonlight and starlight were gone, and in their place the lurid
glare of burning cities and blazing forests cast a fearful radiance up
through the great eddying waves of smoke, and reflected itself on the
under surface of the clouds; now the air-ship swept hither and thither
with bewildering rapidity, like the incarnation of some fearful spirit
of destruction. Alan had vanished, and she was giving orders rapidly,
and men were working the long, slender guns in a grim silence that
contrasted weirdly with the horrible din that rose from the earth.
She saw neither smoke nor flame from the guns, nor heard any sound as
they were discharged, but every time she raised her hand, the motion
was followed within a few seconds by a shaking of the atmosphere, a
dull roar from the earth, and the outburst of vast, dazzling masses of
flame, before which the blaze of the conflagration paled.
She looked down with fierce exultation upon the scene of carnage and
destruction; and as she gazed upon it, the fires died away, the roar of
the explosions began to sound like echoes in the distance, and when the
landscape of her dreamland took definite shape again, the air-ship was
hovering over a vast, oval valley, walled in by mighty mountain masses,
surmounted by towering peaks, on some of which crests of everlasting
snow and ice shone undissolved in the rays of the tropical sun.
[Illustration: AS SHE GAZED UPON IT, THE FIRES DIED AWAY. _Page 57._]
The valley itself was of such incomparable and fairy-like beauty, that
it seemed to belong rather to the realm of imagination than to the
world of reality. A great lake lay in the centre, its emerald shores
lined with groves of palms and orange-trees, and fringed with verdant
islets spangled with many coloured flowers.
On the northern shore of the lake lay a splendid city of marble
palaces, surrounded by shady gardens, and divided from each other by
broad, straight streets, smooth as ivory and spotless as snow, and
lined with double rows of wide-spreading trees, which cast a pleasant
shade along their sides.
In the midst of a vast square, in the centre of the city, rose an
immense building of marble of perfect whiteness, surmounted by a great
golden dome, which in turn was crowned by the silver shape of a woman
with great spreading wings, which blazed and scintillated in the
sunlight as though they had been fashioned of sheets of crystal, pure
and translucent as diamonds.
All over the valley, villas and palaces of marble were scattered in
cool ravines and on shaded, wooded slopes; and as far as her eye could
reach, vast expanses of garden land, emerald pastures, and golden corn
fields stretched away over hill and vale, until the most remote were
met by the cool, dark forests which clothed the middle slopes of the
all-encircling mountains, and themselves gave place higher up to dark,
frowning precipices, vast walls of living rock, rising thousands of
feet sheer upwards, and ending in the mighty peaks which stood like
eternal sentinels guarding this enchanted realm.
If she had had her will, she would have gazed for ever upon this
delightful scene; but the spirit of the dream was not to be controlled,
and it faded from her sight just as the picture of death and desolation
had done. As it faded away, Alan, who had now come back to her side,
laid his hand upon her shoulder, and, looking at her with mournful
eyes, said wearily--
“That was your first and last glimpse of heaven. Now comes the
judgment!”
As he spoke, the air-ship soared upwards again, and was instantly
enveloped in a cloud of impenetrable darkness. She sped on and on in
utter silence through the gloom, which was so dense that it seemed
to cast the rays of the ship’s electric lights back upon her as she
floated amidst it. Presently the deathlike silence was broken by a low,
weird sound, that seemed like a wail of universal agony rising up from
the earth beneath.
Then, far ahead and high up in the sky, appeared a faint light, which
grew and brightened until the darkness melted away before it; and Olga
saw the air-ship floating near enough to the earth for her to see that
all its vegetation was withered and yellow, and the beds of its streams
almost dry, with only little, thin rivulets trickling sluggishly along
them.
Millions of people seemed wandering listlessly and aimlessly about the
streets of the cities and the parched fields of the open country, ever
and anon stretching their hands as though in appeal up to the dark,
moonless sky, in which the fearful shape of light and fiery mist was
growing every moment brighter and vaster.
It grew and grew until it arched half the horizon with its tremendous
curve; and then out of the midst of it came a huge, dazzling globe of
fire, from the rim of which shot forth great flames of every colour,
some of which seemed to descend to the surface of the earth like long
fiery tongues that licked up the seething lakes in wreathing clouds of
steam, which hissed and roared as they rose like ascending cataracts.
She looked down between them at the earth. The myriads of figures were
there still, but now they lay prone and lifeless on the ground, as
though the last agony of mankind were past. The light of the blazing
globe grew more and more dazzling, and the heat more and more intense.
The speed of the air-ship slackened visibly, although the wings and
propellers were working at their utmost speed, and it was falling
rapidly, as though there was no longer any air to support it.
She gasped for breath in the choking, burning atmosphere of the deck
chamber, and then a swift, vivid wave of light seemed to sweep through
her brain, and she woke with a choking gasp of terror, with the chimes
of her watch ringing sweetly in her ears, telling her that the vision
had been but a dream of a night that had passed.
Wide awake in an instant, she got out of bed and turned on the electric
lamp. As the room had been perfectly warmed all night by the electric
conduction-stoves, which were then in almost universal use, she only
stopped to throw a fur-lined cloak round her shoulders before she went
to remove the cap of the crucible.
She peered anxiously into the vessel, and saw about two fluid ounces of
a dark, glittering liquid, from the surface of which the light of the
lamp was reflected as though from a mirror. With hands that trembled
slightly, in spite of the great effort she made to keep her nerves in
check, she poured the precious fluid into one of the glass measures
that she had used the night before.
Seen through the glass, its colour was a deep, brilliant blue, and,
like the white liquid first prepared, shone as though with an inherent,
light-giving power of its own. She held it up admiringly to the light,
and said to herself, with the same cruel smile that had curved her lips
when she had contemplated the other fluid--
“How beautiful it is! It might be made of sapphires dissolved in some
potent essence. In reality, it is an elixir capable of dissolving the
souls of men. Ah, my proud Masters of the World, we shall soon see how
much your boasted powers avail you against this and a woman’s wit and
hatred!
“And you, my splendid Alan, before to-morrow night you shall be at my
feet! Two drops of this, and that proud, strong soul of yours shall
melt away like a snowflake under warm rain, and you shall be my slave
and do my bidding, and never know that you are not as free as you are
now.
“The days have gone by when men sought the Elixir of Life, but Paul
Romanoff sought and found the Elixir of Death,--death of the body or
of the soul, as the possessor of it shall will; and he is gone, and I,
alone of all the children of men, possess it!”[3]
She set the measure down on the table, and took out of her valise a
similar little flask to the one which held the white liquid. In this
she carefully poured the contents of the measure, screwed the cap on as
before, and hung it with the other on the chain round her neck. Then,
woman-like, she turned to the mirror, threw back her cloak a little,
and gazed at the reflection of the two flasks, which shone like two
great gems upon her white skin.
“There is such a necklace as woman never wore before, since woman first
delighted in gems,--a necklace that all the jewels in the world could
not buy. How pretty they look!”
So saying, she turned away from the mirror and carefully put away all
traces of the work she had been engaged in, then she threw off her
cloak and turned the lamp out and got into bed again, to wait until the
attendant called her at eight o’clock as she had directed.
She did not go to sleep again, but lay with wide-open eyes looking at
the darkness, and conjuring out of it visions of love and war, and the
world-wide empire which she believed to be now almost within her grasp.
In all these visions, two figures stood out prominently--those of Serge
and Alan, her lover that had been and the lover that was to be,--if
only the elixir did its work as its discoverer had said it would.
As such thoughts as these passed through her brain, a new and perhaps
a nobler conception of her mission of revenge took possession of her.
In the past, Natasha had won the love of the man whose genius had made
possible, nay, irresistible, the triumph of that revolution which had
subverted the throne of her ancestors, and sent the last of the Tsars
of Russia to die like a felon in chains amidst the snows of Siberia.
What more magnificent vengeance could she, the last surviving daughter
of the Romanoffs, win than the enslavement of the man descended not
only from Natasha and Richard Arnold, but also from that Alan Tremayne
whose name he bore, and who, as first President of the Anglo-Saxon
Federation, had ensured the victory of the Western races over the
Eastern?
The empire of freedom and peace, which Richard Arnold had won for
Natasha’s sake, this son of the line of Natas should convert, at her
bidding, into an empire such as she longed to rule over,--an empire in
which men should be her slaves and women her handmaidens. For her sake
the wave of Destiny should flow back again; she would be the Semiramis
of a new despotism.
What was the freedom or the happiness of the mass of mankind to her?
If she could raise herself above them, and put her foot upon their
necks, why should she not do so? By force the leaders of the Terror had
overthrown the despotisms of the Old World; why should not she employ
the self-same force to seat herself, with the man she loved in spite of
all her hereditary hatred, upon the throne of the world, and reign with
him in that glorious land whose beauties had been revealed to her in
the vision which surely had been something more than a dream?
Thus thinking and dreaming, and illumining the darkness with her own
visions of glories to come, she lay in a kind of ecstasy, until a knock
at the door warned her that the time for dreaming had passed and the
hour for action had arrived.
A brief half-hour sufficed for her toilet, and she entered the room
of the hotel, in which Serge was awaiting her, dressed to perfection
in her plain, clinging robe of royal purple, and self-composed as
though she had passed the night in the most innocent and dreamless of
slumbers. She submitted to his greeting kiss with as good a grace as
possible, and yet with an inward shrinking which almost amounted to
loathing, born of the visions which were still floating in her mind.
She shuddered almost invisibly as he released her from his embrace, and
then the bright blood rose to her cheeks, and a sudden light shone in
her eyes, as the thought possessed her, that not many hours would pass
before a far nobler lover would take her in his arms, and would press
sweeter kisses upon her lips,--the lips which had sworn fealty and
devotion to the enemies of his race.
Serge, with the true egotism of the lover, took the blush to himself,
and said, with a laugh of boyish frankness--
“Travelling and Russian air seem to agree with your Majesty. Evidently
you have slept well your first night on Russian soil. I was half
afraid that what happened yesterday, and your conversation with that
golden-winged braggart from Aeria, would have sufficiently disturbed
you to give you a more or less sleepless night, but you look as fresh
and as lovely as though you had slept in the most perfect peace at
home.”
The anger that these unthinking words awoke in her soul, brought back
the bright flush to Olga’s cheeks and the light into her eyes, and
again Serge mistook the sign, as indeed he might well have done; and
so he entirely mistook the meaning of her words when she replied, with
a laugh, of the true significance of which he had not the remotest
conception--
“On the contrary, how was it possible that I could have anything
but the sweetest sleep and the most pleasant dreams, after such a
delightful journey and the making of such pleasant acquaintances?
Do you not think the Fates have favoured us beyond our wildest
expectations, in thus bringing our enemies so unconsciously across our
path at the very outset of our campaign against them?
“But really, these Aerians are delightful fellows. No, don’t frown at
me like that, because you know as well as I do, that in that chivalrous
good-nature of theirs lies our best hope of success.”
As she spoke she went up to him, and laid her two hands upon his
shoulder, and went on looking up into his eyes with a seductive
softness in hers.
“I am afraid I made you terribly jealous yesterday; but really, Serge,
you must remember that in diplomacy, and diplomacy alone, lies our only
chance of advantage in the circumstances which the kindly Fates appear
to have specially created for our benefit.
“The time for you to act will come later on, and when it comes, I know
you will acquit yourself like the true Romanoff that you are; but for
the present--well, you know these Aerians are men, and where diplomacy
alone is in the question, it is better that a woman should deal with
them. You will trust me for the present,--won’t you, Serge?”
For all answer, he took her face between his hands, put her head back,
and kissed her, saying as he released her--
“Yes, darling; I will trust you not only now, but for ever. You are
wiser than I am in these things. Do as you please; I will obey.”
As he spoke, the door opened, and an attendant came in with two little
cups of coffee on a silver salver. He placed it on the table, told
them that breakfast would be ready for them in the morning-room in ten
minutes, and retired. As they sipped their coffee, Olga said to Serge--
“Now, we shall meet our enemies at breakfast, and I want you to be a
great deal more cordial and friendly than you were yesterday. Our own
feelings concern ourselves alone, but in our outward conduct we owe
something to the sacred cause which we both have at heart. You can
imagine how great a sacrifice I am making in my relations with those
whom I have been taught to hate from my cradle.
“I can see as well as you do, perhaps better, that this future ruler of
Aeria admires me in his own boyish way. If I can bring myself to appear
complaisant, surely it is not too much to ask you to look upon it with
indifference, or even with interest,--a brotherly interest, you know;
for you must remember that he knows me only as your sister.
“Now, I want you to ask them to come and have breakfast with us at
our table, and to exert yourself to appear agreeable to them, even as
I shall; and above all things, promise me that you will fall in with
any suggestions that I may make as regards our trip in this wonderful
air-ship which we are to make to-morrow.
“There is no time now to explain to you what I mean, but I swear to
you, by the blood that flows in both our veins, that if I can only
carry through, without any let or hindrance, the plans that I have
already formed--that before forty-eight hours have passed that air-ship
shall no longer be under Alan Arnoldson’s command.”
He looked at her for a moment with almost incredulous admiration. She
returned his inquiring glance with a steady, unwavering gaze, which
made suspicion impossible. All his life he had grown up to look upon
her as sharing with him the one hope that was left of restoring the
ancient fortunes of their family. More than this they had been lovers
ever since either of them knew the meaning of love.
How then could he have dreamt that behind so fair an appearance lay
as dark and treacherous a design as the brain of an ambitious woman
had ever conceived? Intoxicated by her beauty and the memory of
his lifelong love, he took a couple of steps towards her, took her
unresisting into his arms again, and said passionately--
“Give me another kiss, darling, and on your lips I will swear to trust
you always and do your bidding even to the death.”
She returned his kiss with a passion so admirably simulated that his
resolve was thrice strengthened by it, and then she released herself
gently from his embrace, saying--
“Even so, unto the death if needs be,--as I shall serve our sacred
cause to the end, cost what it may! Come, it is time that we went down
to breakfast.”
FOOTNOTE:
[3] Such a poison as this is no figment of the imagination. It has
been known to Oriental adepts in poisoning for many centuries, and the
Borghias were certainly familiar with it. A kindred drug was used by
the Russian agents who kidnapped the late Prince Alexander of Bulgaria,
though in his case the injury was permanent. It reduced him from one
of the most able and daring princes in Europe to a mental and moral
cripple, who was perfectly content to live in the obscurity to which
his enemies had consigned him.