MICHAEL
Up to the time of Prince Gregoriev's marriage, that peculiar man had
used his huge dwelling as a gypsy uses a moor: he had wandered about,
living for three months in the west wing, three more in the east, again
for six high up in the central portion of the great building, taking
with him the rather simple impedimenta of his state, and arranging them
as he chose. The presence of Sophia had, however, made at least one
change in his existence. Little either of time or attention as he gave
her, Michael was driven, by mere consciousness of her proximity, to fix
upon some certain suite of rooms for the pursuit of his personal labors
and his peculiar recreations. And, after the first irritation of
necessity had worn away, he found the arrangement to possess unforeseen
advantages. Unlike his class, he was a man of simple, even austere
habits in his working hours. Luxury at such times meant annoyance to
him; and only the barest necessities of furniture and attire were
admitted to his periods of solitary labor. Upon his establishment in his
now permanently arranged suite in the eastern wing of the palace, he
found that certain papers and written references--kept hitherto under
lock and key, and guarded from every eye--could at last find a permanent
place in that work-room which no one was permitted to enter, even for
purposes of cleaning. For twenty-eight years, now, this had formed one
of his six rooms, of which two on the second floor were connected with
those below by a private staircase. By degrees, his habits had become as
fixed at those of a woman. His many vices were as strong, as severe, as
his few virtues; and more than one man had remarked that, so far as was
known, there was not a single balancing weakness in the nature of this
iron man.
At two o'clock on the morning after the ball, Michael had seated
himself at the great table in his sanctum, and prepared for work.
He had no idea of bed; for sleep in his present state, his brain
afire with the fury of unwonted defeat, would have been impossible.
But he could still pin his thoughts down to the composition of two
or three state documents--reports requiring a liberal use of
imagination--before allowing himself the luxury of setting about
arranging his plan of retaliation: retaliation upon the great Czar,
his master. Thus it was that dawn, the late, wintry dawn, rising
seven hours later, fell upon his dishevelled figure stretched out
in a chair beside the paper-piled table, his heavy brows drawn down
in deep thought, his lungs filled with deep draughts of smoke drawn
from the pipe between his teeth.
The passage which led down to this dread room of his, opened also into
the office in which he conducted business with his colleagues, and which
was decorated and furnished with Oriental magnificence. The inner room,
of which only Piotr, his body-servant, had ever had so much as a
glimpse--the room that had sheltered this master of men and of evil at
the ebb and the flood of his power--was bare of ornament, and held not
one unnecessary article. The two windows were uncurtained; but outside
the customary double panes, the cracks of which were filled with pounded
wool, stretched a significant iron net-work which was embedded far in
the stones at the window-edges. Within, the four walls were covered with
staring, yellow plaster; only one side of it, that opposite the
working-chair, being partly covered--and that only by two big maps: one
of the Russian Empire, with its dependencies; the other covered with a
mass of line-tracery and unreadable jottings, written in what was
evidently a cipher. The key to this was hidden in the brain of the man
who had composed it.
Michael himself had dubbed this square of parchment a map: his map of
men. And it contained mention of some members in almost every great
family in the Empire. Nicholas himself was there, side by side with his
valet--a man, indeed, of vast importance in that ministerial world to
which a Gregoriev still aspired.
Finally, beside these things, high up in a corner of the east wall, was
the inevitable, dingy little daub meant for the blessed and blessing
Virgin: a superstitious but universal custom which even Michael
submitted to, and which represented, perhaps, his single remaining shred
of religion. For the rest, a huge table, a single chair, and two
bookcases filled with a small, but remarkably well-chosen collection of
reference-books, finished the characteristic arrangement of the room.
Here, this morning, the gray light of a winter dawn mingled with the
dull flare of the hanging-lamp increasing the ghastliness of his
appearance, sat Michael Gregoriev, in the stale bitterness of a
night-old rage and mortification. On the floor, in an unceremonious
heap, lay his heavily embroidered coat, with its medals still upon it.
In its stead the Prince had wrapped himself in a worn robe of old
brocade, fur-lined. Heavy felt slippers shod his feet. His hair was
tumbled over his head in a leonine mass. His features were gray; but his
eyes still glowed above the dark, purplish circles that shadowed his
cheeks. His documents were finished. He had sat for two hours and more
in this present brown study; and, tested as his endurance had been, his
concentration was still absolute. On the table, near at hand, stood a
flask of vodka, nearly empty, and a jar of water scarcely touched.
Nevertheless, the Prince of the lonely house was not drunk: was not even
misty-headed. At a quarter after eight there came a knock at the door,
and his hoarse, "Enter!" was as immediate as was the return to his
reverie. Nor did he lift his eyes as Piotr entered softly, arranged the
steaming samovar at his master's elbow, placed bread, fresh butter, and
a dish of lentils beside it, and then departed as noiselessly as he had
come.
For five minutes the man beside the table did not stir. Then he rose,
still preoccupied, crossed the room to his cipher map, and ran his
finger down a certain line of hieroglyphics till he found what he
sought, and paused to read one passage carefully, twice. Then, when his
face had straightened till his lips actually stretched themselves into
the semblance of a sardonic smile, he dropped the subject of his
thoughts, returned to the table, and made himself some tea. Glass after
glass of this he drank, steaming hot. But no solid food passed his lips;
and in twenty minutes he reseated himself and set about the writing of
two letters, on the envelope of each of which he placed, in the lower
corner, a peculiar mark--a sign of the Third Section, known to a few
men, and signifying privacy and importance.
These letters were the result of his recent cogitation; and both
concerned the affair of the previous night. He had realized his
situation to the full; and he knew that it must be faced. His sensations
were unfamiliar, however; for it was many years since he had had to
acknowledge a defeat so absolute and so grave. Never before, however,
had he pitted himself against a force that strong men will not take
seriously because it is never to be logically reckoned with.
Nevertheless, that force must, sooner or later, be acknowledged by every
human being. Michael Gregoriev especially should have taken it into
consideration long before; for it was many years since he began his
preparations for what last night was to have brought him: a place in the
last unconquered world of power. His preparation, however, had led him
only through ways peopled by men: and for men and their deeds he was
more than a match. Their caprices, their follies, their faithlessness,
their treachery even, he had learned long since to calculate and to cope
with. Women, also, he had known: many women; experienced, innocent,
negative, or wicked. And those who had ventured upon his ground, he had
not failed to conquer. It was in the knowledge of these experiences that
he had stood; by its light preparing a _coup_ that was to carry the last
fortress of that upper world which still held out against him: that
peculiar body of women and men called "society."
Years before, with this same purpose in his mind, he had married a
daughter of this class, whose only dower was her birth, and whose only
covetable possession her place among her kind. And this effort had
failed, entirely. Sophia Blashkov, a quiet, gentle, blue-blooded, little
débutante, had found herself utterly unequal to the task either of
forcing a place in those glittering, scornful ranks for her
black-blooded, much-condemned husband, or of keeping her own, now that
she bore his name. True, her marriage had, probably, made possible her
younger sister's exceptional and unhoped-for match. But Michael himself
felt that he had sadly bungled a most important affair. Perceiving his
wife's uselessness for his purpose, all the little admiration he had
ever had for the fragile girl changed speedily into an angry despite.
For the moment, he put her and his social ambitions away together, and
turned back to that world of official intrigue and promotion which had
actually occupied him from that distant time until within the last few
weeks. The old defeat had long since been buried under a heap of newly
gained official honors. But of these, alas! he had now had his fill. For
the first time he was tasting to the full a measure of bitterness as
rank as any the world has to offer. For there is something in the
deliberate rejection by one's kind: a mortification, a sickening sense
of helplessness, of rage, of revolt, that belongs to this experience
alone. It is a kind of suffering in which women frequently become
connoisseurs. But its taste is none the less nauseous to the man on whom
Fate forces it.
Michael Gregoriev, then, a furious man of men, was to-day enduring that
which has turned many a woman soul-sick and weary of existence. All the
amazement of unforeseen repulse: the agonized acceptance of an unjust
superiority, a scorn, a pitiless disdain; the totally capricious setting
of one's self apart from one's fellows as something too despicable for
consideration; above all, one's utter powerlessness against this
arbitrary judgment--all these things he felt, and every one of them cut
him to the quick. For Michael Gregoriev's egotism had grown with every
year.
In his black hour he did not fail to indulge in the usual, useless
revilement of the superior class: an act as natural as it is ridiculous.
Was that society that he had sought out and thought to grasp so pure, so
free from corruption, so spotlessly fair, that his, Prince Gregoriev's
peccadilloes must needs bar him from its gatherings? Certainly this
reputation of his was one thing that had kept the door he knocked on
closed. But there were other reasons--innumerable ones, in fact; some of
them adequate, others entirely inconsistent, that Princess Mirski or
Madame Apúkhtin might have named. Yet, in the final summing-up, there
would probably have been a traditional indefiniteness about the
wherefore of the Gregoriev ostracism. It was simply understood,
instinctively, throughout Moscow, that no person of that name was
knowable. And this fact, _mirabile dictu_, had, after long cogitation,
been at last borne in upon Michael--man as he was.
Prince Gregoriev, though he was generally looked upon as a parvenu, had
not, like most of that type, been born in the gutter. On the contrary,
there was behind him a long line of recluses, eccentrics, hermits
almost, bearing the strongest resemblance to one another by reason of
their oddities. One special trait, stronger than any other, served to
bind them all together, father and son, through generations. This was
their constant and unconquerable sense of personal isolation: of
loneliness. Crowds of friends and sycophants might surround the
Gregoriev. He was none the less bitterly alone. It was, perhaps, a
morbid perception of individuality, of the inevitable isolation of every
soul. But whatever its cause, this sense, in more than one of the race,
had developed into extreme stages of melancholia.
The palace in Konnaia Square had been founded in the year 1679, by the
third of the line, Alexis Gregorievitch, who had purposely placed the
dwelling of his race in this far corner of the city, out of the possible
range of decent dwellings. And none of the succession of Peters and
Mikhails that followed, ever thought to reproach this act of their
ancestor. The details of the life of one of these men would have
sufficed for all, until the breaking of the direct line. But the last
Prince had died childless; and the estate descended by entail to
Michael, eldest son of the dead Prince's dead brother. And though in the
present Gregoriev the instincts of his race survived, they had been in a
large measure altered and redirected. For when, at the age of twenty,
Michael had come into his inheritance, he had, in the first hour of his
new estate, set himself a certain goal, at the same time turning an
iron will and dire traits towards its attainment. Russia was then just
entering upon the rule of the Iron Czar. Iron men, therefore, were soon
in demand, to replace the more vacillating officials who had served the
first Alexander. Prince Gregoriev came forward at once with the request
for a position. And immediately he became involved in that species of
underhand, almost underground, business (necessary to most governments
and to all absolute monarchies) which reached its extreme depth in the
tyranny that ruled Russia during the next thirty years.
It did not take many months for Nicholas to perceive that there lived in
Moscow a supreme performer of questionable transactions. Upon test, the
man showed himself to be all the Czar had thought--and more. He was a
man without a conscience. And the official world rejoiced, and put much
work upon him: so much, that lo! a Gregoriev soon became necessary to
the governmental world. And Michael had worked to more purposes than
one. His great master had no fault to find with his performance of duty.
Thus it was not until too late that more than one of the ministers
discovered the fact that it may be better to have certain things bungled
than to have them carried through by a man so clever that he can put
knowledge amassed by the way to double--sometimes triple, uses. This was
what Gregoriev could, and did, do. He was, _par excellence_, a man of
his time: in many ways even in advance of it. And he had by no means
begun to approach his goal before all the men with whom he came in daily
contact, and many of those considerably above him, had come to stand in
terrible fear of his accurate and tabulated knowledge of things they had
believed to be unsuspected by any human being beyond themselves.
But there was one man in the Empire who, as yet, remained in ignorance
of this trait of his official: who had never felt the faintest scratch
beneath the velvet of his favorite cat's-paw. Thus it was that Michael's
momentary defeat had come about. Czar Nicholas crossed him openly; put
upon him an affront unbearable; lowered him in the eyes of three hundred
puny men and women over whom he had no power for revenge. It was, then,
as a result of this, that treason had begun to surge through the mind of
a brilliantly wicked man. And had he been able to read certain thoughts
passing through his subject's head, it is possible that the Iron One
might have felt a certain uneasiness of mind at possibilities of the
future; and a rather poignant regret at his negligence of the evening
before.
* * * * *
Two hours had gone by since Piotr had carried his master's first meal to
that master's work-room. Michael had finished his letters. His first
anger was gone and his plan of "payment" already under way. With his
mind thus relieved, then, he suddenly began to feel the fatigue of
thirty hours of sleeplessness. With a comforting sense of relaxation, he
ascended to his bedroom, partly undressed himself, lay down on the bed,
and within five minutes had fallen into a sound sleep.
And it was two hours later and Ivan Veliki had rung the hour of eleven,
when the silence of the room was broken by the entrance of Piotr, who,
at sight of his master asleep at this unwonted hour, halted in surprise
and confusion. It took him ten minutes to nerve himself to the waking of
the Prince. But it was only ten more before Michael, who had sworn at
his valet steadily, meantime, for the delay, entered his public office,
fully dressed, to greet General Ryúmin, a member of the Imperial staff,
just now sent as an envoy from the Kremlin. Michael, who chose to greet
him with all the courtesy he could command, hurried forward, his hands
out-stretched, and gave the greetings of the day.
"So! I roused you from sleep, Prince? However, I come direct from the
Kremlin; and his Majesty commands an audience of you at half-past noon.
He is here ex-officio, of course, with only Alderberg, Zelanoi, and
ourselves, on the matter of the forestry ukase. But about you--there's
another matter he wants you for: the petition for the families of
convict-exiles to follow them to Siberia. The Council has rejected it
twice; but Benckendorf is still agitating the question. His Majesty
still seems to object, strongly. You, too, I suppose?"
"If the wife or the daughter be pretty--of course," returned Gregoriev,
lightly. And Ryúmin, seeing that he was not to be drawn, hastily forced
a laugh.
They passed thence into a discussion of local affairs in which they had
recently acted as allies when Ryumin had been Lieutenant-Governor of the
Moscow province. No undercurrent of enmity marred their intercourse.
Gregoriev was certainly an adept at applying or loosening his screws.
His guest had felt them sharply once or twice before to-day. He knew
Gregoriev's power; and Michael asked no more. He had soon made the
General entirely at his ease, and the half-hour passed most agreeably.
At last, however, Ryúmin rose, tacitly to remind his host of the
Imperial audience. They had now, indeed, by driving as fast as possible,
barely time to reach the Kremlin. Gregoriev, nevertheless, paid no
attention to the other's movement.
"Come, Boris Vassilyitch, one more cigar! We may as well settle now the
details of this Pahlen affair. You wish a conviction in any case, I
understand?"
"My dear Prince, it can wait. His Majesty's wishes are more important
than mine, you know."
Gregoriev leaned back in his chair and took three leisurely puffs before
he observed, lazily: "I don't agree with you. However, I must not keep
you if you have some other appointment. I shall hardly start for the
Kremlin before one.
"But--but my dear Gregoriev! The Czar! Your audience!--You see you
forget, my good fellow!"
"I forget nothing whatever, General: not even promises that are not
kept."
Ryúmin stared, open-mouthed, as Gregoriev's gloomy eyes met his. Then,
with a thrill of wonder, he understood that the man before him had the
superb audacity thus openly to rebuke his Emperor.
Certainly Gregoriev's suggestion was no empty threat. Nicholas Romanoff
actually waited something more than an hour for the arrival of the
Moscow police official. When at last Prince Gregoriev was ushered into
the royal presence, the voice of the master of ceremonies shook as he
announced the name; and, while he closed the door that shut this madman
from his sight, he longed and yet dreaded to hear his Majesty's first
words. Should he--had he time to--rush forth and spread abroad the news
of Gregoriev's fall, before the broken man should issue from that
ominously quiet room? Fortunately for himself, the master of ceremonies
was hardly of an adventurous disposition. He cogitated the matter till
he felt it too late to perform the errand and get back in time to see
Gregoriev's expression as he emerged from the Presence. Nevertheless,
minute after minute went by, till an hour had passed: time for a
comprehensive reproof and dismissal, truly! But the feeble-minded one
was prepared for anything by the time the miracle happened. It was three
o'clock before he beheld, issuing from the audience-chamber, side by
side and chatting together in tones of intimacy, Michael Petrovitch
Gregoriev and Nicholas I., Emperor of Russia. Nor was that all. For it
was the face not of the official but of his Imperial Majesty, that wore
an expression of uneasiness, of disquietude, almost--of alarm.
Gregoriev left the Kremlin, by the Gate of the Saviour, on foot. He had
dismissed his sleigh upon his arrival. But, though the afternoon was yet
young, the light of the brief winter day was almost gone. Lights were
appearing in the shop-windows of the Tverskaia as Michael, muffled
comfortably in his sables, entered the celebrated street and walked
along it, leisurely, in a direction leading directly away from his
distant palace. He had no definite goal in mind. He was in the high
humor of immediate success. Many-colored Moscow lay all about him: his
city, wherein he was known to and feared by, nearly every man. Labyrinth
though it was, there was scarcely a corner, an alley, a court-yard in
that most jumbled of cities that he did not know. Moscow belonged to him
as London to Dickens, Paris to Balzac. And, like the great novelists,
his walks, always a delight, played also an important part in his
profession. It was, however, rare that he issued forth in his present
guise. The Iákiminskaia, for instance, saw him oftenest as a petty
merchant; the Piatnitskaia as a Jewish or Tátar trader; the Basmanaia as
a soldier, or petty officer off duty; other quarters as a member of a
workingman's artel, a university hanger-on, or a loafer, as the
neighborhood demanded. To-day, however, being himself, he directed his
steps towards the fashionable part of the town, passing from the
shopping district into the old Equerries' quarter lying behind, and west
of, the Kremlin hill. It was possible that he had some hazy idea of
startling his wife's family by an unwelcome visit; and from them gaining
the latest gossip concerning last night's ball. But the idea remained
nebulous. Nicholas had responded too readily to his touch, the few lines
of cipher on his map had proved too disturbing to the royal mind, for
the tormentor's pride not to have been restored by such evidence of his
power. He knew well that their recent talk, in which he had played his
difficult part with genius, had left his Majesty fearful, not of
revelations concerning mere peculations or juggled laws, but of
something touching his very seat upon the throne; a certain disclosure
that might bring up again that old, forgotten matter of his unnatural
accession to the throne in place of his elder brother Constantine. And
Michael had an unfounded belief that the Czar would, therefore, in some
unknown way, bring him, peaceably, the social power he now trebly
desired. Therefore it was not difficult to turn him from his half-formed
purpose.
Leaving the great street for the comparatively quiet Nikolskaia, he
presently encountered one of the unofficial companions of his leisure
hours: a retired army officer, with a reputation at cards which few
gamblers cared to ignore. Colonel Lodoroff greeted the Prince with a
customary effusion, and found little difficulty in drawing him on to a
certain small club, maintained by twenty members, of which the very
existence was unknown to outsiders. Here, by day or by night, could be
found companions for any carousal, partners for any known game of skill
or chance; in short, that species of person which the ordinary club does
its best to exclude. The small building's exquisitely decorated rooms
were not, however, unfamiliar to the eyes of certain members of the
opposite sex, whose eligibility to admittance consisted only in certain
powers of attraction and entertainment.
Within the discreet recesses of this nameless organization, Michael
Petrovitch spent two or three agreeable hours. And finally, at six
o'clock--more than an hour after despatching a short message to Piotr,
in Konnaia Square--Gregoriev, with Lodoroff, three other men, and
Mesdames Nathalie, Anna, and Celéstine, whose last names were as
changeable as their complexions, set off, in four public droschkies, for
the Gregoriev palace.
Piotr, on receipt of his master's note, carried it at once to his wife,
who was one of the half-dozen serfs educated through the influence of
Princess Sophia. And upon her explanation of its contents he rushed off
to set the kitchens in a hum of preparation. It was no novelty, this
order: a dinner for eight to be served at an hour's notice in his
excellency's dining-room, that the Princess need not be "disturbed." The
chef--a Frenchman, not a serf, chattered with excitement and displeasure
while he composed his hurried menu. Piotr and Sósha, the major-domo, set
to work together in the round dining-room in the Prince's wing, both of
them thinking drearily of the task that must be theirs in that same room
on the following morning. And all through the servants' quarters might
be heard, from time to time, a certain blasphemous little prayer,
uttered in the expressionless tone that bespoke long familiarity: "God
be merciful to us!"--the sign of the cross made in the air--"and cause
the devil soon to take unto himself his own!"
But the lord of the underworld had evidently no present need of the soul
of the head of the Gregoriev house. It was a quarter before seven when
the Prince's special suite was invaded by the noisy party, already in
the first state of reckless exhilaration induced by an extravagant use
of golden fluid so dear to the Russian palate. Piotr, Sósha, and three
or four of the older serfs who were accustomed to these entertainments,
were in attendance, all of them drooping with the fatigue of the
previous day, but none of them pausing to marvel at the vitality of
their master. The table was satisfactorily decorated. The ladies were
pleased to praise their corsage bouquets of camellias so hurriedly
obtained; and all the party partook heartily of the _hors d'oeuvres_
and liqueurs served on a side-table, according to the old Muscovite
custom. Gregoriev was the only one of them all who appeared to be quite
unaffected by what he had drunk. But he was, nevertheless, the evil
genius of the company, flattering the women, taunting the men, to
continually increasing libations.
Meantime, on the second floor of the palace, not far away from that
dining-room beneath, a very different meal was in progress. Princess
Gregoriev, her sister, and Ivan, her boy, sat together at a small, round
table, waited on by women. Only one of the three made much pretence at
eating. Madame Gregoriev, red-eyed, but very calm, sat beside her
sister, whose face also bore traces of recent tears. Both of the ladies
continually pressed food upon the boy, who, as he ate with boyish
heartiness, talked to them with the pleasant and wonderful
unconsciousness of childhood. The difficult hour was nearly over before
sounds of the affair below first began to be audible to them. But at the
first, muffled scream of laughter, Madame Gregoriev started, violently,
all the color flying from her face, and a ghastly pallor taking its
place. The Countess Dravikine, after one instant of puzzled
consideration, leaned forward, and began a hastily animated conversation
with her nephew, upon all sorts of boyish affairs. Fortunately the
effort was needed only for a moment or two, for presently, Alexei,
Ivan's special serf, a combination of playfellow and valet, who had been
summoned by the tactful Másha appeared in the doorway, waiting an order
to remove his young master. It was time. Madame Dravikine's voice could
no longer override the noise from below. Moreover, Ivan had now ceased
to eat, and was sitting motionless, his mouth drawn into a pitiful line,
a spot of vivid red flaming from each pale cheek, his great eyes
wistfully, anxiously, seeking those of his mother, which as persistently
avoided them. Suddenly there came from below a piercing scream: a scream
holding in it a note at which Caroline, forgetting everything else,
sprang suddenly to her feet, crying:
"Sophia, the thing is unbearable! How can you possibly permit yourself
to endure it? For God's sake, pull yourself up, and leave this--"
"Ivan! Alexei is waiting for you. Go at once!" broke in the Princess,
sharply, her eyes fixed upon her sister with a light of bitter reproof
in their weary depths. At the same time, she held out both hands to her
son.
Without a word, the boy rose and went to his mother. A kiss passed
between them. Then he turned and walked straight to the door. He did not
once look back. But neither woman failed to perceive that his delicate
hands were clinched so tightly that the bloodless knuckles were tinged
with blue.
When the door closed behind him, Sophia Ivanovna answered her sister's
unfinished question: "You think I should leave this house. Do you for an
instant imagine that he would permit his son to go with me? Am I then to
leave my child here--to _that_?"
With a low exclamation, Caroline went forward and fell upon her knees
beside her sister, asking for pardon between her shaking sobs.