"LA MORT OU LA VIE!"
I took a cab from the newspaper office to Von Eckhardt's address,--a
flat in the west end.
I found him, as Medhurst had reported, considerably agitated. He is a
good-hearted chap, and a brilliant writer, though he's too apt to allow
his feelings to carry him away; for he's even more sentimental than the
average German, and entirely lacking in the characteristic German
phlegm. He is as vivacious and excitable as a Frenchman, and I fancy
there's a good big dash of French blood in his pedigree, though he'd be
angry if any one suggested such a thing!
He did not know me for a moment, but when I told him who I was he
welcomed me effusively.
"Ah, now I remember; we met in London, when I was there with my poor
friend. 'We heard at midnight the clock,' as our Shakespeare says. And
you are going to take his place? I have not yet the shock recovered of
his death; from it I never shall recover. O judgment, to brutish beasts
hast thou fled, and their reason men have lost. My heart, with my friend
Carson, in its coffin lies, and me, until it returns, you must excuse!"
I surmised that he was quoting Shakespeare again, as he had to Medhurst.
I wanted to smile, though I was so downright wretched. He would air what
he conceived to be his English, and he was funny!
"Would you mind speaking German?" I asked, for there was a good deal I
wanted to learn from him, and I guessed I should get at it all the
sooner if I could head him off from his quotations. His face fell, and I
hastened to add--
"Your English is splendid, of course, and you've no possible need to
practise it; but my German's rusty, and I'd be glad to speak a bit. Just
you pull me up, if you can't understand me, and tell me what's wrong."
My German is as good as most folks', any day, but he just grabbed at my
explanation, and accepted it with a kindly condescension that was even
funnier than his sentimental vein. Therefore the remainder of our
conversation was in his own language.
"I hear you've left the _Zeitung_," I remarked. "Going on another
paper?"
"The editor of the _Zeitung_ dismissed me," he answered explosively.
"Pig that he is, he would not understand the reason that led to my
ejection from Russia!"
"Conducted to the frontier, and shoved over, eh? How did that happen?" I
asked.
"Because I demanded justice on the murderers of my friend," he declared
vehemently. "I went to the chief of the police, and he laughed at me.
There are so many murders in Petersburg, and what is one Englishman more
or less? I went to the British Embassy. They said the matter was being
investigated, and they emphatically snubbed me. They are so insular, so
narrow-minded; they could not imagine how strong was the bond of
friendship between Carson and me. He loved our Shakespeare, even as I
love him."
"You wrote to Lord Southbourne," I interrupted bluntly. "And you sent
him a portrait,--a woman's portrait that poor Carson had been carrying
about in his breast-pocket. Now why did you do that? And who is the
woman?"
His answer was startling.
"I sent it to him to enable him to recognize her, and warn her if he
could find her. I knew she was in London, and in danger of her life; and
I knew of no one whom I could summon to her aid, as Carson would have
wished, except Lord Southbourne, and I only knew him as my friend's
chief."
"But you never said a word of all this in the note you sent to
Southbourne with the photograph. I know, for he showed it me."
"That is so; I thought it would be safer to send the letter separately;
I put a mere slip in with the photograph."
Had Southbourne received that letter? If so, why had he not mentioned it
to me, I thought; but I said aloud: "Who is the woman? What is her name?
What connection had she with Carson?"
"He loved her, as all good men must love her, as I myself, who have seen
her but once,--so beautiful, so gracious, so devoted to her country, to
the true cause of freedom,--'a most triumphant lady' as our Sha--"
"Her name, man; her name!" I cried somewhat impatiently.
"She is known under several," he answered a trifle sulkily. "I believe
her real name is Anna Petrovna--"
That conveyed little; it is as common a name in Russia as "Ann Smith"
would be in England, and therefore doubtless a useful alias.
"But she has others, including two, what is it you call them--neck
names?"
"Nicknames; well, go on."
"In Russia those who know her often speak of her by one or the
other,--'La Mort,' or 'La Vie,' it is safer there to use a pseudonym.
'La Mort' because they say,--they are superstitious fools,--that
wherever she goes, death follows, or goes before; and 'La Vie' because
of her courage, her resource, her enthusiasm, her so-inspiring
personality. Those who know, and therefore love her most, call her that.
But, as I have said, she has many names, an English one among them; I
have heard it, but I cannot recall it. That is one of my present
troubles."
"Was it 'Anne Pendennis,' or anything like that?" I asked, huskily.
"Ach, that is it; you know her, then?"
"Yes, I know her; though I had thought her an English woman."
"That is her marvel!" he rejoined eagerly. "In France she is a
Frenchwoman; in Germany you would swear she had never been outside the
Fatherland; in England an English maiden to the life, and in Russia she
is Russian, French, English, German,--American even, with a name to suit
each nationality. That is how she has managed so long to evade her
enemies. The Russian police have been on her track these three years;
but they have never caught her. She is wise as the serpent, harmless as
the dove--"
I had to cut his rhapsodies short once more.
"What is the peril that threatens her? She was in England until
recently; the Secret Police could not touch her there?"
"It is not the police now. They are formidable,--yes,--when their grasp
has closed on man or woman; but they are incredibly stupid in many ways.
See how often she herself has slipped through their fingers! But this is
far more dangerous. She has fallen under the suspicion of the League."
"The League that has a red geranium as its symbol?"
He started, and glanced round as if he suspected some spy concealed even
in this, his own room.
"You know of it?" he asked in a low voice.
"I have heard of it. Well, are you a member of it?"
"I? Gott in Himmel, no! Why should I myself mix in these Russian
politics? But Carson was involved with them,--how much even I do not
know,--and she has been one of them since her childhood. Now they say
she is a traitress. If possible they will bring her before the Five--the
secret tribunal. Even they do not forget all she has done for them; and
they would give her the chance of proving her innocence. But if she will
not return, they will think that is sufficient proof, and they will kill
her, wherever she may be."
"How do you know all this?"
"Carson told me before I left for Wilna. He meant to warn her. They
guessed that, and they condemned, murdered him!"
He began pacing up and down the room, muttering to himself; and I sat
trying to piece out the matter in my own mind.
"Have you heard anything of a man called Cassavetti; though I believe
his name was Selinski?" I asked at length.
Von Eckhardt turned to me open-mouthed.
"Selinski? He is himself one of the Five; he is in London, has been
there for months; and it is he who is to bring her before the tribunal,
by force or guile."
"He is dead, murdered; stabbed to the heart in his own room, even as
Carson was, four days ago."
He sat down plump on the nearest chair.
"Dead! That, at least, is one of her enemies disposed of! That is good
news, splendid news, Herr Wynn. Why did you not tell me that before? 'To
a gracious message an host of tongues bestow,' as our Shakespeare says.
How is it you know so much? Do you also know where she is? I was told
she would be here, three days since; that is why I have waited. And she
has not come! She is still in England?"
"No, she left on Sunday morning. I do not know where she is, but she has
been seen at Ostend with--the Russian Grand Duke Loris."
I hated saying those last words; but I had to say them, for, though I
knew Anne Pendennis was lost to me, I felt a deadly jealousy of this
Russian, to whom, or with whom she had fled; and I meant to find out all
that Von Eckhardt might know about him, and his connection with her.
"The Grand Duke Loris!" he repeated. "She was with him, openly? Does she
think him strong enough to protect her? Or does she mean to die with
him? For he is doomed also. She must know that!"
"What is he to her?"
I think I put the question quietly; though I wanted to take him by the
throat and wring the truth out of him.
"He? He is the cause of all the trouble. He loves her. Yes, I told you
that all good men who have but even seen her, love her; she is the
ideal of womanhood. One loves her, you and I love her; for I see well
that you yourself have fallen under her spell! We love her as we love
the stars, that are so infinitely above us,--so bright, so remote, so
adorable! But he loves her as a man loves a woman; she loves him as a
woman loves a man. And he is worthy of her love! He would give up
everything, his rank, his name, his wealth, willingly, gladly, if she
would be his wife. But she will not, while her country needs her. It is
her influence that has made him what he is,--the avowed friend of the
persecuted people, ground down under the iron heel of the autocracy. Yet
it is through him that she has fallen under suspicion; for the League
will not believe that he is sincere; they will trust no aristocrat."
He babbled on, but I scarcely heeded him. I was beginning to pierce the
veil of mystery, or I thought I was; and I no longer condemned Anne
Pendennis, as, in my heart, I had condemned her, only an hour back. The
web of intrigue and deceit that enshrouded her was not of her spinning;
it was fashioned on the tragic loom of Fate.
She loved this Loris, and he loved her? So be it! I hated him in my
heart; though, even if I had possessed the power, I would have wrought
him no harm, lest by so doing I should bring suffering to her.
Henceforth I must love her as Von Eckhardt professed to do, or was his
protestation mere hyperbole? "As we love the stars--so infinitely above
us, so bright, so remote!"
And yet--and yet--when her eyes met mine as we stood together under the
portico of the Cecil, and again in that hurried moment of farewell at
the station, surely I had seen the love-light in them, "that beautiful
look of love surprised, that makes all women's eyes look the same," when
they look on their beloved.
So, though for one moment I thought I had unravelled the tangle, the
next made it even more complicated than before. Only one thread shone
clear,--the thread of my love.