“BARINIA, the young stranger has arrived.”
“Where is he?”
“Oh, he is waiting at the lodge.”
“I told you to show him to Natacha’s sitting-room. Didn’t you understand
me, Ermolai?”
“Pardon, Barinia, but the young stranger, when I asked to search him, as
you directed, flatly refused to let me.”
“Did you explain to him that everybody is searched before being allowed
to enter, that it is the order, and that even my mother herself has
submitted to it?”
“I told him all that, Barinia; and I told him about madame your mother.”
“What did he say to that?”
“That he was not madame your mother. He acted angry.”
“Well, let him come in without being searched.”
“The Chief of Police won’t like it.”
“Do as I say.”
Ermolai bowed and returned to the garden. The “barinia” left the
veranda, where she had come for this conversation with the old servant
of General Trebassof, her husband, and returned to the dining-room
in the datcha des Iles, where the gay Councilor Ivan Petrovitch was
regaling his amused associates with his latest exploit at Cubat’s
resort. They were a noisy company, and certainly the quietest among them
was not the general, who nursed on a sofa the leg which still held him
captive after the recent attack, that to his old coachman and his two
piebald horses had proved fatal. The story of the always-amiable Ivan
Petrovitch (a lively, little, elderly man with his head bald as an
egg) was about the evening before. After having, as he said, “recure
la bouche” for these gentlemen spoke French like their own language
and used it among themselves to keep their servants from
understanding--after having wet his whistle with a large glass of
sparkling rosy French wine, he cried:
“You would have laughed, Feodor Feodorovitch. We had sung songs on the
Barque* and then the Bohemians left with their music and we went out
onto the river-bank to stretch our legs and cool our faces in the
freshness of the dawn, when a company of Cossacks of the Guard came
along. I knew the officer in command and invited him to come along with
us and drink the Emperor’s health at Cubat’s place. That officer, Feodor
Feodorovitch, is a man who knows vintages and boasts that he has never
swallowed a glass of anything so common as Crimean wine. When I named
champagne he cried, ‘Vive l’Empereur!’ A true patriot. So we started,
merry as school-children. The entire company followed, then all the
diners playing little whistles, and all the servants besides, single
file. At Cubat’s I hated to leave the companion-officers of my friend at
the door, so I invited them in, too. They accepted, naturally. But the
subalterns were thirsty as well. I understand discipline. You know,
Feodor Feodorovitch, that I am a stickler for discipline. Just because
one is gay of a spring morning, discipline should not be forgotten. I
invited the officers to drink in a private room, and sent the subalterns
into the main hall of the restaurant. Then the soldiers were thirsty,
too, and I had drinks served to them out in the courtyard. Then, my
word, there was a perplexing business, for now the horses whinnied. The
brave horses, Feodor Feodorovitch, who also wished to drink the health
of the Emperor. I was bothered about the discipline. Hall, court, all
were full. And I could not put the horses in private rooms. Well, I made
them carry out champagne in pails and then came the perplexing business
I had tried so hard to avoid, a grand mixture of boots and horse-shoes
that was certainly the liveliest thing I have ever seen in my life. But
the horses were the most joyous, and danced as if a torch was held under
their nostrils, and all of them, my word! were ready to throw their
riders because the men were not of the same mind with them as to the
route to follow! From our window we laughed fit to kill at such a
mixture of sprawling boots and dancing hoofs. But the troopers finally
got all their horses to barracks, with patience, for the Emperor’s
cavalry are the best riders in the world, Feodor Feodorovitch. And we
certainly had a great laugh!--Your health, Matrena Petrovna.”
[* The “Barque” is a restaurant on a boat, among the isles,
near the Gulf of Finland, on a bank of the Neva.]
These last graceful words were addressed to Madame Trebassof, who
shrugged her shoulders at the undesired gallantry of the gay Councilor.
She did not join in the conversation, excepting to calm the general, who
wished to send the whole regiment to the guard-house, men and horses.
And while the roisterers laughed over the adventure she said to her
husband in the advisory voice of the helpful wife:
“Feodor, you must not attach importance to what that old fool Ivan
tells you. He is the most imaginative man in the capital when he has had
champagne.”
“Ivan, you certainly have not had horses served with champagne in
pails,” the old boaster, Athanase Georgevitch, protested jealously. He
was an advocate, well-known for his table-feats, who claimed the hardest
drinking reputation of any man in the capital, and he regretted not to
have invented that tale.
“On my word! And the best brands! I had won four thousand roubles. I
left the little fete with fifteen kopecks.”
Matrena Petrovna was listening to Ermolai, the faithful country servant
who wore always, even here in the city, his habit of fresh nankeen, his
black leather belt, his large blue pantaloons and his boots glistening
like ice, his country costume in his master’s city home. Madame Matrena
rose, after lightly stroking the hair of her step-daughter Natacha,
whose eyes followed her to the door, indifferent apparently to the
tender manifestations of her father’s orderly, the soldier-poet, Boris
Mourazoff, who had written beautiful verses on the death of the
Moscow students, after having shot them, in the way of duty, on their
barricades.
Ermolai conducted his mistress to the drawing-room and pointed across
to a door that he had left open, which led to the sitting-room before
Natacha’s chamber.
“He is there,” said Ermolai in a low voice.
Ermolai need have said nothing, for that matter, since Madame
Matrena was aware of a stranger’s presence in the sitting-room by the
extraordinary attitude of an individual in a maroon frock-coat bordered
with false astrakhan, such as is on the coats of all the Russian police
agents and makes the secret agents recognizable at first glance. This
policeman was on his knees in the drawing-room watching what passed in
the next room through the narrow space of light in the hinge-way of the
door. In this manner, or some other, all persons who wished to approach
General Trebassof were kept under observation without their knowing it,
after having been first searched at the lodge, a measure adopted since
the latest attack.
Madame Matrena touched the policeman’s shoulder with that heroic hand
which had saved her husband’s life and which still bore traces of the
terrible explosion in the last attack, when she had seized the infernal
machine intended for the general with her bare hand. The policeman rose
and silently left the room, reached the veranda and lounged there on a
sofa, pretending to be asleep, but in reality watching the garden paths.
Matrena Petrovna took his place at the hinge-vent. This was her rule;
she always took the final glance at everything and everybody. She
roved at all hours of the day and night round about the general, like a
watch-dog, ready to bite, to throw itself before the danger, to receive
the blows, to perish for its master. This had commenced at Moscow after
the terrible repression, the massacre of revolutionaries under the walls
of Presnia, when the surviving Nihilists left behind them a placard
condemning the victorious General Trebassof to death. Matrena Petrovna
lived only for the general. She had vowed that she would not survive
him. So she had double reason to guard him.
But she had lost all confidence even within the walls of her own home.
Things had happened even there that defied her caution, her instinct,
her love. She had not spoken of these things save to the Chief of
Police, Koupriane, who had reported them to the Emperor. And here now
was the man whom the Emperor had sent, as the supreme resource, this
young stranger--Joseph Rouletabille, reporter.
“But he is a mere boy!” she exclaimed, without at all understanding the
matter, this youthful figure, with soft, rounded cheeks, eyes clear and,
at first view, extraordinarily naive, the eyes of an infant. True, at
the moment Rouletabille’s expression hardly suggested any superhuman
profundity of thought, for, left in view of a table, spread with
hors-d’oeuvres, the young man appeared solely occupied in digging out
with a spoon all the caviare that remained in the jars. Matrena noted
the rosy freshness of his cheeks, the absence of down on his lip and not
a hint of beard, the thick hair, with the curl over the forehead. Ah,
that forehead--the forehead was curious, with great over-hanging cranial
lumps which moved above the deep arcade of the eye-sockets while the
mouth was busy--well, one would have said that Rouletabille had not
eaten for a week. He was demolishing a great slice of Volgan sturgeon,
contemplating at the same time with immense interest a salad of creamed
cucumbers, when Matrena Petrovna appeared.
He wished to excuse himself at once and spoke with his mouth full.
“I beg your pardon, madame, but the Czar forgot to invite me to
breakfast.”
Madame Matrena smiled and gave him a hearty handshake as she urged him
to be seated.
“You have seen His Majesty?”
“I come from him, madame. It is to Madame Trebassof that I have the
honor of speaking?”
“Yes. And you are Monsieur--?”
“Joseph Rouletabille, madame. I do not add, ‘At your service--because
I do not know about that yet. That is what I said just now to His
Majesty.”
“Then?” asked Madame Matrena, rather amused by the tone the conversation
had taken and the slightly flurried air of Rouletabille.
“Why, then, I am a reporter, you see. That is what I said at once to my
editor in Paris, ‘I am not going to take part in revolutionary affairs
that do not concern my country,’ to which my editor replied, ‘You do
not have to take part. You must go to Russia to make an inquiry into
the present status of the different parties. You will commence by
interviewing the Emperor.’ I said, ‘Well, then, here goes,’ and took the
train.”
“And you have interviewed the Emperor?”
“Oh, yes, that has not been difficult. I expected to arrive direct
at St. Petersburg, but at Krasnoie-Coelo the train stopped and the
grand-marshal of the court came to me and asked me to follow him. It
was very flattering. Twenty minutes later I was before His Majesty. He
awaited me! I understood at once that this was obviously for something
out of the ordinary.”
“And what did he say to you?”
“He is a man of genuine majesty. He reassured me at once when I
explained my scruples to him. He said there was no occasion for me to
take part in the politics of the matter, but to save his most faithful
servant, who was on the point of becoming the victim of the strangest
family drama ever conceived.”
Madame Matrena, white as a sheet, rose to her feet.
“Ah,” she said simply.
But Rouletabille, whom nothing escaped, saw her hand tremble on the back
of the chair.
He went on, not appearing to have noticed her emotion:
“His Majesty added these exact words: ‘It is I who ask it of you; I and
Madame Trebassof. Go, monsieur, she awaits you.’”
He ceased and waited for Madame Trebassof to speak.
She made up her mind after brief reflection.
“Have you seen Koupriane?”
“The Chief of Police? Yes. The grand-marshal accompanied me back to the
station at Krasnoie-Coelo, and the Chief of Police accompanied me to St.
Petersburg station. One could not have been better received.”
“Monsieur Rouletabille,” said Matrena, who visibly strove to regain her
self-control, “I am not of Koupriane’s opinion and I am not”--here she
lowered her trembling voice--“of the opinion His Majesty holds. It
is better for me to tell you at once, so that you may not
regret intervening in an affair where there are--where there
are--risks--terrible risks to run. No, this is not a family drama. The
family is small, very small: the general, his daughter Natacha (by his
former marriage), and myself. There could not be a family drama among
us three. It is simply about my husband, monsieur, who did his duty as
a soldier in defending the throne of his sovereign, my husband whom they
mean to assassinate! There is nothing else, no other situation, my dear
little guest.”
To hide her distress she started to carve a slice of jellied veal and
carrot.
“You have not eaten, you are hungry. It is dreadful, my dear young man.
See, you must dine with us, and then--you will say adieu. Yes, you will
leave me all alone. I will undertake to save him all alone. Certainly, I
will undertake it.”
A tear fell on the slice she was cutting. Rouletabille, who felt the
brave woman’s emotion affecting him also, braced himself to keep from
showing it.
“I am able to help you a little all the same,” he said. “Monsieur
Koupriane has told me that there is a deep mystery. It is my vocation to
get to the bottom of mysteries.”
“I know what Koupriane thinks,” she said, shaking her head. “But if
I could bring myself to think that for a single day I would rather be
dead.”
The good Matrena Petrovna lifted her beautiful eyes to Rouletabille,
brimming with the tears she held back.
She added quickly:
“But eat now, my dear guest; eat. My dear child, you must forget what
Koupriane has said to you, when you are back in France.”
“I promise you that, madame.”
“It is the Emperor who has caused you this long journey. For me, I
did not wish it. Has he, indeed, so much confidence in you?” she asked
naively, gazing at him fixedly through her tears.
“Madame, I was just about to tell you. I have been active in some
important matters that have been reported to him, and then sometimes
your Emperor is allowed to see the papers. He has heard talk, too (for
everybody talked of them, madame), about the Mystery of the Yellow Room
and the Perfume of the Lady in Black.”
Here Rouletabille watched Madame Trebassof and was much mortified at the
undoubted ignorance that showed in her frank face of either the yellow
room or the black perfume.
“My young friend,” said she, in a voice more and more hesitant, “you
must excuse me, but it is a long time since I have had good eyes for
reading.”
Tears, at last, ran down her cheeks.
Rouletabille could not restrain himself any further. He saw in one flash
all this heroic woman had suffered in her combat day by day with the
death which hovered. He took her little fat hands, whose fingers were
overloaded with rings, tremulously into his own:
“Madame, do not weep. They wish to kill your husband. Well then, we will
be two at least to defend him, I swear to you.”
“Even against the Nihilists!”
“Aye, madame, against all the world. I have eaten all your caviare. I am
your guest. I am your friend.”
As he said this he was so excited, so sincere and so droll that Madame
Trebassof could not help smiling through her tears. She made him sit
down beside her.
“The Chief of Police has talked of you a great deal. He came here
abruptly after the last attack and a mysterious happening that I will
tell you about. He cried, ‘Ah, we need Rouletabille to unravel this!’
The next day he came here again. He had gone to the Court. There,
everybody, it appears, was talking of you. The Emperor wished to know
you. That is why steps were taken through the ambassador at Paris.”
“Yes, yes. And naturally all the world has learned of it. That makes it
so lively. The Nihilists warned me immediately that I would not reach
Russia alive. That, finally, was what decided me on coming. I am
naturally very contrary.”
“And how did you get through the journey?”
“Not badly. I discovered at once in the train a young Slav assigned
to kill me, and I reached an understanding with him. He was a charming
youth, so it was easily arranged.”
Rouletabille was eating away now at strange viands that it would have
been difficult for him to name. Matrena Petrovna laid her fat little
hand on his arm:
“You speak seriously?”
“Very seriously.”
“A small glass of vodka?”
“No alcohol.”
Madame Matrena emptied her little glass at a draught.
“And how did you discover him? How did you know him?”
“First, he wore glasses. All Nihilists wear glasses when traveling. And
then I had a good clew. A minute before the departure from Paris I had a
friend go into the corridor of the sleeping-car, a reporter who would do
anything I said without even wanting to know why. I said, ‘You call out
suddenly and very loud, “Hello, here is Rouletabille.”’ So he called,
‘Hello, here is Rouletabille,’ and all those who were in the corridor
turned and all those who were already in the compartments came out,
excepting the man with the glasses. Then I was sure about him.”
Madame Trebassof looked at Rouletabille, who turned as red as the comb of
a rooster and was rather embarrassed at his fatuity.
“That deserves a rebuff, I know, madame, but from the moment the Emperor
of all the Russias had desired to see me I could not admit that any mere
man with glasses had not the curiosity to see what I looked like. It
was not natural. As soon as the train was off I sat down by this man and
told him who I thought he was. I was right. He removed his glasses and,
looking me straight in the eyes, said he was glad to have a little talk
with me before anything unfortunate happened. A half-hour later the
entente-cordiale was signed. I gave him to understand that I was coming
here simply on business as a reporter and that there was always time to
check me if I should be indiscreet. At the German frontier he left me to
go on, and returned tranquilly to his nitro-glycerine.”
“You are a marked man also, my poor boy.”
“Oh, they have not got us yet.”
Matrena Petrovna coughed. That _us_ overwhelmed her. With what calmness
this boy that she had not known an hour proposed to share the dangers
of a situation that excited general pity but from which the bravest kept
aloof either from prudence or dismay.
“Ah, my friend, a little of this fine smoked Hamburg beef?”
But the young man was already pouring out fresh yellow beer.
“There,” said he. “Now, madame, I am listening. Tell me first about the
earliest attack.”
“Now,” said Matrena, “we must go to dinner.”
Rouletabille looked at her wide-eyed.
“But, madame, what have I just been doing?”
Madame Matrena smiled. All these strangers were alike. Because they
had eaten some hors-d’oeuvres, some zakouskis, they imagined their host
would be satisfied. They did not know how to eat.
“We will go to the dining-room. The general is expecting you. They are
at table.”
“I understand I am supposed to know him.”
“Yes, you have met in Paris. It is entirely natural that in passing
through St. Petersburg you should make him a visit. You know him
very well indeed, so well that he opens his home to you. Ah, yes, my
step-daughter also”--she flushed a little--“Natacha believes that her
father knows you.”
She opened the door of the drawing-room, which they had to cross in
order to reach the dining-room.
From his present position Rouletabille could see all the corners of
the drawing-room, the veranda, the garden and the entrance lodge at the
gate. In the veranda the man in the maroon frock-coat trimmed with false
astrakhan seemed still to be asleep on the sofa; in one of the corners
of the drawing-room another individual, silent and motionless as a
statue, dressed exactly the same, in a maroon frock-coat with false
astrakhan, stood with his hands behind his back seemingly struck with
general paralysis at the sight of a flaring sunset which illumined as
with a torch the golden spires of Saints Peter and Paul. And in the
garden and before the lodge three others dressed in maroon roved
like souls in pain over the lawn or back and forth at the entrance.
Rouletabille motioned to Madame Matrena, stepped back into the
sitting-room and closed the door.
“Police?” he asked.
Matrena Petrovna nodded her head and put her finger to her mouth in a
naive way, as one would caution a child to silence. Rouletabille smiled.
“How many are there?”
“Ten, relieved every six hours.”
“That makes forty unknown men around your house each day.”
“Not unknown,” she replied. “Police.”
“Yet, in spite of them, you have had the affair of the bouquet in the
general’s chamber.”
“No, there were only three then. It is since the affair of the bouquet
that there have been ten.”
“It hardly matters. It is since these ten that you have had...”
“What?” she demanded anxiously.
“You know well--the flooring.”
“Sh-h-h.”
She glanced at the door, watching the policeman statuesque before the
setting sun.
“No one knows that--not even my husband.”
“So M. Koupriane told me. Then it is you who have arranged for these ten
police-agents?”
“Certainly.”
“Well, we will commence now by sending all these police away.”
Matrena Petrovna grasped his hand, astounded.
“Surely you don’t think of doing such a thing as that!”
“Yes. We must know where the blow is coming from. You have four
different groups of people around here--the police, the domestics, your
friends, your family. Get rid of the police first. They must not be
permitted to cross your threshold. They have not been able to protect
you. You have nothing to regret. And if, after they are gone, something
new turns up, we can leave M. Koupriane to conduct the inquiries without
his being preoccupied here at the house.”
“But you do not know the admirable police of Koupriane. These brave men
have given proof of their devotion.”
“Madame, if I were face to face with a Nihilist the first thing I would
ask myself about him would be, ‘Is he one of the police?’ The first
thing I ask in the presence of an agent of your police is, ‘Is he not a
Nihilist?’”
“But they will not wish to go.”
“Do any of them speak French?”
“Yes, their sergeant, who is out there in the salon.”
“Pray call him.”
Madame Trebassof walked into the salon and signaled. The man appeared.
Rouletabille handed him a paper, which the other read.
“You will gather your men together and quit the villa,” ordered
Rouletabille. “You will return to the police Headguarters. Say to M.
Koupriane that I have commanded this and that I require all police
service around the villa to be suspended until further orders.”
The man bowed, appeared not to understand, looked at Madame Trebassof
and said to the young man:
“At your service.”
He went out.
“Wait here a moment,” urged Madame Trebassof, who did not know how to
take this abrupt action and whose anxiety was really painful to see.
She disappeared after the man of the false astrakhan. A few moments
afterwards she returned. She appeared even more agitated.
“I beg your pardon,” she murmured, “but I cannot let them go like this.
They are much chagrined. They have insisted on knowing where they have
failed in their service. I have appeased them with money.”
“Yes, and tell me the whole truth, madame. You have directed them not to
go far away, but to remain near the villa so as to watch it as closely
as possible.”
She reddened.
“It is true. But they have gone, nevertheless. They had to obey you.
What can that paper be you have shown them?”
Rouletabille drew out again the billet covered with seals and signs and
cabalistics that he did not understand. Madame Trebassof translated it
aloud: “Order to all officials in surveillance of the Villa Trebassof to
obey the bearer absolutely. Signed: Koupriane.”
“Is it possible!” murmured Matrena Petrovna. “But Koupriane would never
have given you this paper if he had imagined that you would use it to
dismiss his agents.”
“Evidently. I have not asked him his advice, madame, you may be sure.
But I will see him to-morrow and he will understand.”
“Meanwhile, who is going to watch over him?” cried she.
Rouletabille took her hands again. He saw her suffering, a prey to
anguish almost prostrating. He pitied her. He wished to give her
immediate confidence.
“We will,” he said.
She saw his young, clear eyes, so deep, so intelligent, the well-formed
young head, the willing face, all his young ardency for her, and it
reassured her. Rouletabille waited for what she might say. She said
nothing. She took him in her arms and embraced him.