THE END OF AN ACT
How far we rode I can't say; but it was still dark when we halted at a
small isolated farmhouse, where Mishka roused the farmer, who came out
grumbling at being disturbed before daybreak. After a muttered colloquy,
he led us in and called his wife to prepare tea and food for us, while
he took charge of the horses.
"You must eat and sleep," Mishka announced in his gruff way. "You ought
to be still in the hospital; but we are fools, in these days, every one
of us! Ho--little father--shake down some hay in the barn; we will sleep
there."
I must have been utterly exhausted, for I slept heavily, dreamlessly,
for many hours, and only woke under Mishka's hand, as he shook me.
Through the doorway of the barn, the level rays of the westering sun
showed that the short November day was drawing to a close.
"You have slept long; that is well. But now we must be up and away if we
are to reach Kutno to-night."
"You go with me?"
"So far, yes. If there are no trains running yet, we go on to
Alexandrovo. I shall not leave you till I have set you safely on your
way. Those are my orders."
"I don't know why I'm going," I muttered dejectedly, sitting up among
the hay. "I would rather have stayed."
"You go because he ordered you to; and we all obey him, whether we like
it or not!" he retorted. "And he was right to send you. Why should you
throw your life away for nothing? Come, there is no time to waste in
words. I have brought you water; wash and dress. Remember you are no
longer a disreputable revolutionist, but a respectable American citizen,
and we must make you look a little more like one."
There was something queer in his manner. Gruff as ever, he yet spoke to
me, treated me, almost as if I were a child who had to be heartened up,
as well as taken care of. But I didn't resent it. I knew it was his way
of showing affection; and it touched me keenly. We had learned to
understand each other well, and no man ever had a stancher comrade than
I had in Mishka Pavloff.
During that last of our many rides together he was far less taciturn
then usual; I had never heard him say so much at one stretch as he did
while we pressed on through the dusk.
"We have shown you something of the real Russia since you came back--how
many weeks since? And now, if you get safe across the frontier, you will
be wise to remain there, as any wise man--or woman either--who values
life."
"I don't value my life," I interrupted bitterly.
"You think you do not. That is because you are hasty and ignorant,
though the ignorance is not your fault. You think your heart is broken,
_hein_? Well, one of these days, not long hence, perhaps, you will think
differently; and find that life is a good thing after all,--when it has
not to be lived in Russia! If we ever meet again, you will know I have
spoken the truth."
I knew that before many days had passed, and wondered then how much he
could have told me if he had been minded.
"If we meet again!" I echoed sadly. "Is that likely, friend Mishka?"
"God knows! Stranger things have happened. If I die with, or before my
master,--well, I die. If I do not, I, too, shall make for the frontier
when he no longer has need of me. Where is the good of staying? What
should I do here? I would like to see peace--yes, but there will be no
peace within this generation--"
"But your father?" I asked, thinking of the stanch old man, who had gone
back to his duty at Zostrov.
"My father is dead."
"Dead!" I exclaimed, startled for the moment out of the inertness that
paralyzed my brain.
"He was murdered a week after he returned to Zostrov. There was trouble
with the _moujiks_,--as I knew there would be. The garrison at the
castle was helpless, and there was trouble there also, first about my
little bomb that covered our retreat. You knew I planned that,--_hein_?"
"No, but I suspected it."
"And you said nothing; you are discreet enough in your way. _He_ never
suspected,--does not even now; he thinks it was a plot hatched by his
enemies--perhaps by Stravensky himself, the old fox! But we should never
have got through to Warsaw, if, for a time, at least, all had not
believed that he and I and you were finished off in that affair. Better
for him perhaps, if it had been so!"
He fell silent, and I know he was thinking of the last tragedy, as I
was. The memory of it was hard enough for me to bear; what must it not
be for Loris?
"Yes, there was much trouble," Mishka resumed. "Old Stravensky was
summoned to Petersburg, and he had scarcely set out before the
revolution began, and the troops were recalled. There was but a small
garrison left; I doubt if they would have moved a finger in any case;
and so the _moujiks_ took their own way, and my father--went to his
reward. He was a good man, and their best friend for many a year, but
that they did not understand, since the Almighty has made them beasts
without understanding!"
The darkness had fallen, but I guessed he shrugged his shoulders in the
way I knew so well. A fatalist to the finger-tips was Mishka.
"The news came three days since," he continued. "And such news will
come, in time, from every country district. I tell you all you have seen
and known is but the beginning, and God knows what the end will be!
Therefore, as I have said, this is no country for honest peaceable folk.
My mother died long since, God be thanked; and now but one tie holds me
here."
"Look, yonder are the lights of Kutno."
The town was comparatively quiet, though it was thronged with soldiers,
and there were plenty of signs that Kutno had passed through its own
days of terror, and was probably in for more in the near future.
We left our horses at a _kabak_ and walked through the squalid streets
to the equally squalid railway depot where we parted, almost in silence.
"God be with you," Mishka growled huskily. His face looked more grim
than ever under the poor light of a street-lamp near, and he held my
hands in a grip whose marks I bore for a week after.
He strode heavily away, never once looking back, and I turned into the
depot, where I found the entrance, the ticket office, and the platform
guarded by surly, unkempt soldiers with fixed bayonets. I lost count of
the times I had to produce my passport; and turned a deaf ear to the
insults lavished upon me by most of my interlocutors. I thought I had
better resume my pretended ignorance of Russian and trust to German to
carry me through, as it did. I was allowed to board one of the cars at
last; they were filthy, lighted only by a candle here and there, and
crowded with refugees of all classes. I was lucky to get in at all, and,
though all the cars were soon crammed to their utmost capacity, it was
an hour or more before the train started. Then it crawled and jolted
through the darkness at a pace that I reckoned would land us at
Alexandrovo somewhere about noon next day,--if we ever got there at all.
But the indescribable discomforts of that long night journey at least
prevented anything in the way of coherent thought. I look back on it now
as a blank interval; a curtain dropped at the end of a long and lurid
act in the drama of life.
At Alexandrovo more soldiers, more hustling, more interrogations; then
the barrier, and beyond,--freedom!
I've a hazy notion that I arrived at a big, well-lighted station, and
was taken possession of by some one who hustled me into a cab; but the
next thing I remember clearly was waking and finding myself in bed,--a
nice clean bed, with a huge down pillow affair on top,--in a big
well-furnished room. That down affair--I couldn't remember the name of
it for the moment--and the whole aspect of the room showed that I was in
a German hotel; though how I got there I really couldn't remember. I
rang the bell; my hand felt so heavy that I could scarcely lift it as
far, and it looked curiously thin, with blue marks, like faint bruises
on it, and the veins stood out.
A plump, comfortable looking woman, in a nurse's uniform, bustled in;
and beamed at me quite affectionately.
"Now, this is better! Yes, I said it would be so!" she exclaimed in
German. "You feel quite yourself again, but weak,--yes, that is only to
be expected--"
"Will you be so good as to tell me where I am?" I asked, as politely as
I knew how; staring at her, and wondering if I'd ever seen her before.
"Oh, you men! No sooner do you find your tongue and your senses than you
begin to ask questions! And yet you say it is women who are the
talkers!" she answered, with a kind of ponderous archness. "You are at
the Hotel Reichshof to be sure; and being well taken care of. The head?"
she touched my forehead with her firm, cool fingers. "It hurts no more?
Ah, it has healed beautifully; I did well to remove the strappings
yesterday. There will be a scar, yes, but that cannot be helped. And now
you are hungry? Ah, we will soon set that right! It is as I said, though
even the doctor would not believe me. The wounds are nothing,--so to
speak; the exhaustion was the mischief. You came through from Russia?
What times they are having there! You were fortunate to get through at
all. Yes, you are a very fortunate man, and an excellent patient;
therefore you shall have some breakfast!"
She worried me, with her persistent cheerfulness, but it would have been
ungracious to tell her so. She was right in one way, though. I was
ravenously hungry; and when she returned, bringing a tray with delicious
coffee and rolls, I started on them, and let her babble away, as she
did,--nineteen to the dozen.
I gathered that nearly a week had passed since I got to Berlin. The
hotel tout had captured me at the depot, and I collapsed as I got out of
the cab.
"In the ordinary way, you would have been sent to a hospital, but when
they saw the portrait--"
"What portrait?" I asked; but even as I spoke my memory was returning,
and I knew she must mean the miniature Loris had given me.
"What portrait? Why, the Fraulein Pendennis, to be sure!"