She went out to caution the servants to a strict watch, armed to the
teeth, before the gate all night long, and she crossed the deserted
garden. Under the veranda the schwitzar was spreading a mattress for
Ermolai. She asked him if he had seen the young Frenchman anywhere, and
after the answer, could only say to herself, “Where is he, then?” Where
had Rouletabille gone? The general, whom she had carried up to his
room on her back, without any help, and had helped into bed without
assistance, was disturbed by this singular disappearance. Had someone
already carried off “their” Rouletabille? Their friends were gone and
the orderlies had taken leave without being able to say where this boy
of a journalist had gone. But it would be foolish to worry about the
disappearance of a Journalist, they had said. That kind of man--these
journalists--came, went, arrived when one least expected them, and
quitted their company--even the highest society--without formality. It
was what they called in France “leaving English fashion.” However,
it appeared it was not meant to be impolite. Perhaps he had gone to
telegraph. A journalist had to keep in touch with the telegraph at all
hours. Poor Matrena Petrovna roamed the solitary garden in tumult of
heart. There was the light in the general’s window on the first floor.
There were lights in the basement from the kitchens. There was a light
on the ground-floor near the sitting-room, from Natacha’s chamber
window. Ah, the night was hard to bear. And this night the shadows
weighed heavier than ever on the valiant breast of Matrena. As she
breathed she felt as though she lifted all the weight of the threatening
night. She examined everything--everything. All was shut tight, was
perfectly secure, and there was no one within excepting people she was
absolutely sure of--but whom, all the same, she did not allow to go
anywhere in the house excepting where their work called them. Each in
his place. That made things surer. She wished each one could remain
fixed like the porcelain statues of men out on the lawn. Even as she
thought it, here at her feet, right at her very feet, a shadow of one
of the porcelain men moved, stretched itself out, rose to its knees,
grasped her skirt and spoke in the voice of Rouletabille. Ah, good! it
was Rouletabille. “Himself, dear madame; himself.”
“Why is Ermolai in the veranda? Send him back to the kitchens and tell
the schwitzar to go to bed. The servants are enough for an ordinary
guard outside. Then you go in at once, shut the door, and don’t concern
yourself about me, dear madame. Good-night.”
Rouletabille had resumed, in the shadows, among the other porcelain
figures, his pose of a porcelain man.
Matrena Petrovna did as she was told, returned to the house, spoke to
the schwitzar, who removed to the lodge with Ermolai, and their mistress
closed the outside door. She had closed long before the door of the
kitchen stair which allowed the domestics to enter the villa from below.
Down there each night the devoted gniagnia and the faithful Ermolai
watched in turn.
Within the villa, now closed, there were on the ground-floor only
Matrena herself and her step-daughter Natacha, who slept in the chamber
off the sitting-room, and, above on the first floor, the general asleep,
or who ought to be asleep if he had taken his potion. Matrena remained
in the darkness of the drawing-room, her dark-lantern in her hand.
All her nights passed thus, gliding from door to door, from chamber to
chamber, watching over the watch of the police, not daring to stop her
stealthy promenade even to throw herself on the mattress that she had
placed across the doorway of her husband’s chamber. Did she ever sleep?
She herself could hardly say. Who else could, then? A tag of sleep here
and there, over the arm of a chair, or leaning against the wall, waked
always by some noise that she heard or dreamed, some warning, perhaps,
that she alone had heard. And to-night, to-night there is Rouletabille’s
alert guard to help her, and she feels a little less the aching terror
of watchfulness, until there surges back into her mind the recollection
that the police are no longer there. Was he right, this young man?
Certainly she could not deny that some way she feels more confidence now
that the police are gone. She does not have to spend her time watching
their shadows in the shadows, searching the darkness, the arm-chairs,
the sofas, to rouse them, to appeal in low tones to all they held
binding, by their own name and the name of their father, to promise them
a bonus that would amount to something if they watched well, to count
them in order to know where they all were, and, suddenly, to throw full
in their face the ray of light from her little dark-lantern in order to
be sure, absolutely sure, that she was face to face with them, one of
the police, and not with some other, some other with an infernal machine
under his arm. Yes, she surely had less work now that she had no longer
to watch the police. And she had less fear!
She thanked the young reporter for that. Where was he? Did he remain in
the pose of a porcelain statue all this time out there on the lawn? She
peered through the lattice of the veranda shutters and looked anxiously
out into the darkened garden. Where could he be? Was that he, down
yonder, that crouching black heap with an unlighted pipe in his mouth?
No, no. That, she knew well, was the dwarf she genuinely loved, her
little domovoi-doukh, the familiar spirit of the house, who watched with
her over the general’s life and thanks to whom serious injury had not
yet befallen Feodor Feodorovitch--one could not regard a mangled leg
that seriously. Ordinarily in her own country (she was from the Orel
district) one did not care to see the domovoi-doukh appear in flesh and
blood. When she was little she was always afraid that she would come
upon him around a turn of the path in her father’s garden. She always
thought of him as no higher than that, seated back on his haunches and
smoking his pipe. Then, after she was married, she had suddenly run
across him at a turning in the bazaar at Moscow. He was just as she
had imagined him, and she had immediately bought him, carried him
home herself and placed him, with many precautions, for he was of very
delicate porcelain, in the vestibule of the palace. And in leaving
Moscow she had been careful not to leave him there. She had carried him
herself in a case and had placed him herself on the lawn of the datcha
des Iles, that he might continue to watch over her happiness and over
the life of her Feodor. And in order that he should not be bored,
eternally smoking his pipe all alone, she had surrounded him with a
group of little porcelain genii, after the fashion of the Jardins des
Iles. Lord! how that young Frenchman had frightened her, rising suddenly
like that, without warning, on the lawn. She had believed for a moment
that it was the domovoi-doukh himself rising to stretch his legs.
Happily he had spoken at once and she had recognized his voice. And
besides, her domovoi surely would not speak French. Ah! Matrena Petrovna
breathed freely now. It seemed to her, this night, that there were two
little familiar genii watching over the house. And that was worth more
than all the police in the world, surely. How wily that little fellow
was to order all those men away. There was something it was necessary
to know; it was necessary therefore that nothing should be in the way
of learning it. As things were now, the mystery could operate without
suspicion or interference. Only one man watched it, and he had not the
air of watching. Certainly Rouletabille had not the air of constantly
watching anything. He had the manner, out in the night, of an easy
little man in porcelain, neither more nor less, yet he could
see everything--if anything were there to see--and he could hear
everything--if there were anything to hear. One passed beside him
without suspecting him, and men might talk to each other without an idea
that he heard them, and even talk to themselves according to the habit
people have sometimes when they think themselves quite alone. All the
guests had departed thus, passing close by him, almost brushing him,
had exchanged their “Adieus,” their “Au revoirs,” and all their final,
drawn-out farewells. That dear little living domovoi certainly was a
rogue! Oh, that dear little domovoi who had been so affected by the
tears of Matrena Petrovna! The good, fat, sentimental, heroic woman
longed to hear, just then, his reassuring voice.
“It is I. Here I am,” said the voice of her little living familiar
spirit at that instant, and she felt her skirt grasped. She waited
for what he should say. She felt no fear. Yet she had supposed he was
outside the house. Still, after all, she was not too astonished that he
was within. He was so adroit! He had entered behind her, in the shadow
of her skirts, on all-fours, and had slipped away without anyone
noticing him, while she was speaking to her enormous, majestic
schwitzar.
“So you were here?” she said, taking his hand and pressing it nervously
in hers.
“Yes, yes. I have watched you closing the house. It is a task well-done,
certainly. You have not forgotten anything.”
“But where were you, dear little demon? I have been into all the
corners, and my hands did not touch you.”
“I was under the table set with hors-d’oeuvres in the sitting-room.”
“Ah, under the table of zakouskis! I have forbidden them before now
to spread a long hanging cloth there, which obliges me to kick my foot
underneath casually in order to be sure there is no one beneath. It is
imprudent, very imprudent, such table-cloths. And under the table of
zakouskis have you been able to see or hear anything?”
“Madame, do you think that anyone could possibly see or hear anything in
the villa when you are watching it alone, when the general is asleep and
your step-daughter is preparing for bed?”
“No. No. I do not believe so. I do not. No, oh, Christ!”
They talked thus very low in the dark, both seated in a corner of the
sofa, Rouletabille’s hand held tightly in the burning hands of Matrena
Petrovna.
She sighed anxiously. “And in the garden--have you heard anything?”
“I heard the officer Boris say to the officer Michael, in French, ‘Shall
we return at once to the villa?’ The other replied in Russian in a way I
could see was a refusal. Then they had a discussion in Russian which I,
naturally, could not understand. But from the way they talked I gathered
that they disagreed and that no love was lost between them.”
“No, they do not love each other. They both love Natacha.”
“And she, which one of them does she love? It is necessary to tell me.”
“She pretends that she loves Boris, and I believe she does, and yet she
is very friendly with Michael and often she goes into nooks and corners
to chat with him, which makes Boris mad with jealousy. She has forbidden
Boris to speak to her father about their marriage, on the pretext that
she does not wish to leave her father now, while each day, each minute
the general’s life is in danger.”
“And you, madame--do you love your step-daughter?” brutally inquired the
reporter.
“Yes--sincerely,” replied Matrena Petrovna, withdrawing her hand from
those of Rouletabille.
“And she--does she love you?”
“I believe so, monsieur, I believe so sincerely. Yes, she loves me,
and there is not any reason why she should not love me. I
believe--understand me thoroughly, because it comes from my heart--that
we all here in this house love one another. Our friends are old proved
friends. Boris has been orderly to my husband for a very long time.
We do not share any of his too-modern ideas, and there were many
discussions on the duty of soldiers at the time of the massacres. I
reproached him with being as womanish as we were in going down on his
knees to the general behind Natacha and me, when it became necessary to
kill all those poor moujiks of Presnia. It was not his role. A soldier
is a soldier. My husband raised him roughly and ordered him, for his
pains, to march at the head of the troops. It was right. What else could
he do? The general already had enough to fight against, with the whole
revolution, with his conscience, with the natural pity in his heart of
a brave man, and with the tears and insupportable moanings, at such a
moment, of his daughter and his wife. Boris understood and obeyed him,
but, after the death of the poor students, he behaved again like a woman
in composing those verses on the heroes of the barricades; don’t you
think so? Verses that Natacha and he learned by heart, working together,
when they were surprised at it by the general. There was a terrible
scene. It was before the next-to-the-last attack. The general then had
the use of both legs. He stamped his feet and fairly shook the house.”
“Madame,” said Rouletabille, “a propos of the attacks, you must tell me
about the third.”
As he said this, leaning toward her, Matrena Petrovna ejaculated a
“Listen!” that made him rigid in the night with ear alert. What had she
heard? For him, he had heard nothing.
“You hear nothing?” she whispered to him with an effort. “A tick-tack?”
“No, I hear nothing.”
“You know--like the tick-tack of a clock. Listen.”
“How can you hear the tick-tack? I’ve noticed that no clocks are running
here.”
“Don’t you understand? It is so that we shall be able to hear the
tick-tack better.”
“Oh, yes, I understand. But I do not hear anything.”
“For myself, I think I hear the tick-tack all the time since the last
attempt. It haunts my ears, it is frightful, to say to one’s self: There
is clockwork somewhere, just about to reach the death-tick--and not to
know where, not to know where! When the police were here I made them
all listen, and I was not sure even when they had all listened and said
there was no tick-tack. It is terrible to hear it in my ear any moment
when I least expect it. Tick-tack! Tick-tack! It is the blood beating
in my ear, for instance, hard, as if it struck on a sounding-board. Why,
here are drops of perspiration on my hands! Listen!”
“Ah, this time someone is talking--is crying,” said the young man.
“Sh-h-h!” And Rouletabille felt the rigid hand of Matrena Petrovna on
his arm. “It is the general. The general is dreaming!”
She drew him into the dining-room, into a corner where they could no
longer hear the moanings. But all the doors that communicated with the
dining-room, the drawing-room and the sitting-room remained open behind
him, by the secret precaution of Rouletabille.
He waited while Matrena, whose breath he heard come hard, was a little
behind. In a moment, quite talkative, and as though she wished to
distract Rouletabille’s attention from the sounds above, the broken
words and sighs, she continued:
“See, you speak of clocks. My husband has a watch which strikes. Well,
I have stopped his watch because more than once I have been startled by
hearing the tick-tack of his watch in his waistcoat-pocket. Koupriane
gave me that advice one day when he was here and had pricked his ears
at the noise of the pendulums, to stop all my watches and clocks so that
there would be no chance of confusing them with the tick-tack that might
come from an infernal machine planted in some corner. He spoke from
experience, my dear little monsieur, and it was by his order that all
the clocks at the Ministry, on the Naberjnaia, were stopped, my dear
little friend. The Nihilists, he told me, often use clockworks to set
off their machines at the time they decide on. No one can guess all the
inventions that they have, those brigands. In the same way, Koupriane
advised me to take away all the draught-boards from the fireplaces. By
that precaution they were enabled to avoid a terrible disaster at the
Ministry near the Pont-des-chantres, you know, petit demovoi? They saw a
bomb just as it was being lowered into the fire-place of the minister’s
cabinet.* The Nihilists held it by a cord and were up on the roof
letting it down the chimney. One of them was caught, taken to
Schlusselbourg and hanged. Here you can see that all the
draught-boards of the fireplaces are cleared away.”
*Actual attack on Witte.
“Madame,” interrupted Rouletabille (Matrena Petrovna did not know that
no one ever succeeded in distracting Rouletabille’s attention), “madame,
someone moans still, upstairs.”
“Oh, that is nothing, my little friend. It is the general, who has bad
nights. He cannot sleep without a narcotic, and that gives him a fever.
I am going to tell you now how the third attack came about. And then you
will understand, by the Virgin Mary, how it is I have yet, always have,
the tick-tack in my ears.
“One evening when the general had got to sleep and I was in my own room,
I heard distinctly the tick-tack of clockwork operating. All the clocks
had been stopped, as Koupriane advised, and I had made an excuse to send
Feodor’s great watch to the repairer. You can understand how I felt
when I heard that tick-tack. I was frenzied. I turned my head in all
directions, and decided that the sound came from my husband’s chamber. I
ran there. He still slept, man that he is! The tick-tack was there. But
where? I turned here and there like a fool. The chamber was in darkness
and it seemed absolutely impossible for me to light a lamp because I
thought I could not take the time for fear the infernal machine would go
off in those few seconds. I threw myself on the floor and listened
under the bed. The noise came from above. But where? I sprang to the
fireplace, hoping that, against my orders, someone had started the
mantel-clock. No, it was not that! It seemed to me now that the
tick-tack came from the bed itself, that the machine was in the bed. The
general awaked just then and cried to me, ‘What is it, Matrena? What are
you doing?’ And he raised himself in bed, while I cried, ‘Listen! Hear
the tick-tack. Don’t you hear the tick-tack?’ I threw myself upon him
and gathered him up in my arms to carry him, but I trembled too much,
was too weak from fear, and fell back with him onto the bed, crying,
‘Help!’ He thrust me away and said roughly, ‘Listen.’ The frightful
tick-tack was behind us now, on the table. But there was nothing on the
table, only the night-light, the glass with the potion in it, and a
gold vase where I had placed with my own hands that morning a cluster
of grasses and wild flowers that Ermolai had brought that morning on his
return from the Orel country. With one bound I was on the table and at
the flowers. I struck my fingers among the grasses and the flowers, and
felt a resistance. The tick-tack was in the bouquet! I took the bouquet
in both hands, opened the window and threw it as far as I could into the
garden. At the same moment the bomb burst with a terrible noise, giving
me quite a deep wound in the hand. Truly, my dear little domovoi, that
day we had been very near death, but God and the Little Father watched
over us.”
And Matrena Petrovna made the sign of the cross.
“All the windows of the house were broken. In all, we escaped with the
fright and a visit from the glazier, my little friend, but I certainly
believed that all was over.”
“And Mademoiselle Natacha?” inquired Rouletabille. “She must also have
been terribly frightened, because the whole house must have rocked.”
“Surely. But Natacha was not here that night. It was a Saturday. She
had been invited to the soiree du ‘Michel’ by the parents of Boris
Nikolaievitch, and she slept at their house, after supper at the Ours,
as had been planned. The next day, when she learned the danger the
general had escaped, she trembled in every limb. She threw herself in
her father’s arms, weeping, which was natural enough, and declared that
she never would go away from him again. The general told her how I had
managed. Then she pressed me to her heart, saying that she never would
forget such an action, and that she loved me more than if I were truly
her mother. It was all in vain that during the days following we sought
to understand how the infernal machine had been placed in the bouquet
of wild flowers. Only the general’s friends that you saw this evening,
Natacha and I had entered the general’s chamber during the day or in
the evening. No servant, no chamber-maid, had been on that floor. In
the day-time as well as all night long that entire floor is closed and I
have the keys. The door of the servants’ staircase which opens onto that
floor, directly into the general’s chamber, is always locked and barred
on the inside with iron. Natacha and I do the chamber work. There is no
way of taking greater precautions. Three police agents watched over
us night and day. The night of the bouquet two had spent their time
watching around the house, and the third lay on the sofa in the veranda.
Then, too, we found all the doors and windows of the villa shut tight.
In such circumstances you can judge whether my anguish was not deeper
than any I had known hitherto. Because to whom, henceforth, could we
trust ourselves? what and whom could we believe? what and whom could we
watch? From that day, no other person but Natacha and me have the right
to go to the first floor. The general’s chamber was forbidden to his
friends. Anyway, the general improved, and soon had the pleasure of
receiving them himself at his table. I carry the general down and take
him to his room again on my back. I do not wish anyone to help. I am
strong enough for that. I feel that I could carry him to the end of the
world if that would save him. Instead of three police, we had ten; five
outside, five inside. The days went well enough, but the nights were
frightful, because the shadows of the police that I encountered always
made me fear that I was face to face with the Nihilists. One night I
almost strangled one with my hand. It was after that incident that we
arranged with Koupriane that the agents who watched at night, inside,
should stay placed in the veranda, after having, at the end of the
evening, made complete examination of everything. They were not to leave
the veranda unless they heard a suspicious noise or I called to them.
And it was after that arrangement that the incident of the floor
happened, that has puzzled so both Koupriane and me.”
“Pardon, madame,” interrupted Rouletabille, “but the agents, during the
examination of everything, never went to the bedroom floor?”
“No, my child, there is only myself and Natacha, I repeat, who, since
the bouquet, go there.”
“Well, madame, it is necessary to take me there at once.”
“At once!”
“Yes, into the general’s chamber.”
“But he is sleeping, my child. Let me tell you exactly how the affair
of the floor happened, and you will know as much of it as I and as
Koupriane.”
“To the general’s chamber at once.”
She took both his hands and pressed them nervously. “Little friend!
Little friend! One hears there sometimes things which are the secret of
the night! You understand me?”
“To the general’s chamber, at once, madame.”
Abruptly she decided to take him there, agitated, upset as she was by
ideas and sentiments which held her without respite between the wildest
inquietude and the most imprudent audacity.