THE STORY OF CAIN.
AFTER a moment’s thought the physician walked on, motioning to me to
follow him.
“This is no place for private converse,” he said; “when we are in my
house, I can answer you. It was of the Boyar Ramodanofsky I was about
to speak, and your question startled me; but mayhap it was accidental.
At any rate, follow me, and I will endeavor to satisfy your curiosity.”
I was content to follow, since I was assured of hearing something
of the boyar and his beautiful charge. I did not doubt Von Gaden’s
knowledge of them; his profession gained him universal admittance, and
he had been a physician of the czar’s, which was an endorsement readily
accepted by the nobility.
The streets outside the Kremlin were packed with people; the crowd
within had dispersed, and Biélui-gorod was filled with the overflow.
I noticed more than once that curious and, I fancied, suspicious
glances were cast at the physician, as we walked rapidly along; but
he was apparently unconscious of them, although his keen eye was ever
so observant. Here and there were knots of soldiers talking eagerly
together; and at one corner we witnessed a curious example of the
smoldering ire of the Streltsi against their own commanders. An officer
of the Pyzhof regiment was riding towards the Kremlin, evidently on an
errand of importance. As he came abreast of us, a woman hissed him, and
a cry rose suddenly, as if at a preconcerted signal,--
“Down with the officers! Down with oppression and extortion! Give us
our pay!” And the stones flew like hail.
The officer, a young fellow, taken unawares, was evidently alarmed, and
dashed off through the crowd without offering any remonstrance, his
retreat bringing laughter and jeers from the mob. Von Gaden quickened
his step, saying to me in a low tone:--
“It is an evil sign; the insubordination has reached serious
proportions, and there is no master hand upon the rein. We have had two
benevolent rulers,--his late majesty, and the Czar Alexis; we need now
another, Ivan the Terrible. The rabble is breaking its bonds, and woe
to Russia’s rulers when the reckoning day comes!”
“You see it, then, as plainly as I do?” I said. “This election to-day
seemed idle mockery; they have set up a boy to rule the Russias, and
they can’t control the rabble of Moscow!”
“No one can foresee the end,” Von Gaden replied gravely; “the feuds are
so bitter that every man feels his life to be in peril. The Naryshkins
and their adherents all wore armor under their robes to-day. The
patriarch turned from the side of the dead czar to ask the boyars who
should rule over them, and they referred him to the free voters of the
Moscovite State!”
“Le roi est mort, vive le roi!” I said dryly.
“Ay, it is ever so!” replied Von Gaden.
We had reached his home, and he ushered me in with that gentle courtesy
which was one of his characteristics.
“I will take you up to my den,” he said, smiling. “I would talk freely
to you, and there we can be undisturbed.”
He led me up a spiral stair, and opening a low door at the top, we
entered a long, narrow room directly under the roof, and lighted only
by a huge skylight. As I glanced about me, I realized that the place
would furnish an admirable pretext for an accusation of familiarity
with the black arts, far more plausible too than the one preferred
against the book of algebra belonging to Matveief’s son. The room was
bare of all luxury, furnished only in the plainest and most meager
fashion, and fitted up for a laboratory. The skylight illumined the
center of the apartment, leaving the corners gloomy; and out of the
shadows, here and there, grinned a whitened skull, and there were
various other fragments of the human anatomy about the place. The
doctor’s instruments, keen and polished, were in evidence, and heavy
volumes of science were piled from floor to roof, in ponderous stacks.
There were many phials filled with various colored fluids, and a keen
aromatic odor issued from a black kettle simmering over the fire,
suspended on a hook and chain from the brick arch above the hearth. It
was the very spot in which to conjure up a familiar spirit, and there
was something of the same mystery and interest about the dignified
figure of the Hebrew. His keen eye divined my thoughts.
“You see the palpable evidence of my nefarious schemes, M. le Vicomte,”
he said, smiling. “Here is the place to brew a poison for a czar.
Alas! there is no foe so dangerous as ignorant superstition, and the
average Russian of to-day is even more superstitious than the rest of
the world. There is one man in that court, though, who is in advance of
his times; one man who is equal to taking the helm, though the last one
likely to be called, if the election of to-day hold.”
I glanced at him interrogatively; I always liked to hear Von Gaden’s
opinions. He continued at once,--
“I mean Prince Basil Galitsyn,” he said; “he is still a young man, but
a born leader.”
“All his attachment is for the Miloslavsky party though,” I replied.
“Ay, he is for the Miloslavskys. In fact, there is a strong friendship
between him and the Czarevna Sophia; for all that, he may yet be called
to the helm, for who knows what will come?”
“You know the young czar,” I said; “what do you think of him?”
“Peter Alexeivitch is still a child,” Von Gaden replied slowly; “but
I have observed him closely, for in him, I know, we see Russia’s
future ruler, whoever reigns during his minority. His succession seems
beyond dispute, in the long run. He is neither like his amiable
father, Alexis, nor like the late czar, Feodor. He is a young
barbarian,--fierce, cruel, daring. The boy is different from other
boys. I think that Russia has much to fear, and more to hope, from that
young Tartar.”
I laughed. “It is well that these walls are without ears,” I said,
“else what treason would this sound in Moscow!”
“Ay, treason, always treason!” returned Von Gaden, bitterly. “If I cure
the czar, I am a magician; if I fail to cure him, I am a poisoner. It
is, therefore, only a choice of evils.”
He stooped down and stirred the fire, the red light glowing on his
features. I had put aside my cloak and was standing watching him. He
laid down the poker and looked up.
“Be seated,” he said, courteously, signing to me to take the only chair
in the room, while he sat down opposite, on a crooked-legged stool. “I
dare say you think I have forgotten Ramodanofsky, but I have not. It
is an evil story, and I have never told it; but it is borne in upon me
that I may not have long to live, and I do not care to die with that
secret in my bosom,--although I have many others,” he added, smiling.
He was leaning a little forward, his clasped hands resting heavily on
his knees, his back being to the light, and only the red glow of the
fire illumining his features.
“Your profession makes you a natural repository of secrets,” I replied.
“My own nature is too careless for such a work as yours; I should
bungle both with my patients and their confidences.”
“It might be far otherwise if you had been trained to tend the ill and
the dying, M. de Brousson,” he rejoined quietly. “Every profession
molds its neophytes. You have been taught to put people out of the
world, I to help to keep them in it.”
“The nobler work,” I said courteously, although I had no thought of
drawing a comparison between my sword and his lance.
“I thank you,” Von Gaden answered dryly; “but I know well what you
of noble blood think of the surgeons who sew up the slashes made
by your blades. But no matter. I am moved to tell you the story of
Ramodanofsky. I will recount the whole affair; part of it--the last
part--from my own experience, the rest I have gathered sometimes by
inquiry, sometimes by accident. There were two brothers of the name,
the elder Feodor, and the younger Vladimir, whom you have seen, both
old men now, if both had lived. They were of different mothers. Feodor
was the son of a Polish woman, the old boyar’s first wife; Vladimir is
pure Russian, or Tartar, which you please. Feodor was the favorite,
and inherited the estates and the wealth, while Vladimir came off but
poorly. The two men hated each other; the tie of a common fatherhood
never bound them; yet I believe that the Boyar Feodor Ramodanofsky
was just to his half-brother, who was, in a way, dependent upon him;
but you can imagine how the father’s discrimination in favor of the
elder rankled with a man like Vladimir. Feodor went to France at one
time, and while there, married a beautiful young Frenchwoman, of
noble family, and connected, I believe, on her mother’s side with the
Polish mother of Feodor. He brought home his bride, and in a year or
so a child was born to them, to their great disappointment not a boy,
but a girl. Vladimir was then serving in the army, fighting the Don
Cossacks, at the time of Stenka Razin’s insurrection, for it was during
the reign of Alexis the Debonair. When he returned, he was poorer and
more reckless than ever. Whether he loved Feodor’s wife or not, it is
hard to tell, but he began to make love to her whenever his brother
was absent. Marie Ramodanofsky was a noble woman, I knew her; her
daughter has inherited her beauty, along with her father’s spirit. She
resented Vladimir’s treachery, but she dreaded to tell her husband,
who was a passionate and jealous man, and who hated his brother for a
hundred evil traits that he knew, without adding this one. But at last
her position became unendurable, and she told her husband. There is no
doubt that a bitter scene ensued, and the boyar, in the first flush of
his anger and jealousy, must have falsely accused her of encouraging
his brother; when he left her to go in search of the traitor, her
attendants found her in a deathlike swoon. Meanwhile, Feodor followed
Vladimir to the Kremlin, and finding him on the Red Staircase, a
fight ensued. Feodor was the more powerful man of the two, but he was
blind with rage, and it is said that Homyak, the court dwarf, who was
patronized by Vladimir, seeing the fight going against the latter,
tripped up the elder brother, and he fell from the top to the bottom
of the Red Staircase, the blood flowing from a gash in his cheek. I
was in the palace, attending the Czarevna Sophia, and was summoned to
the wounded man. Vladimir had disappeared, and Homyak gave a garbled
version of the fight. It had reached the ears of the czar, and Alexis
was not a little angered; already I think his mind was poisoned by the
tales that later ruined Feodor, for soon after this he lost favor,
and it was bruited about that he was a traitor to the czar. It was
fifteen months afterwards when I was summoned to take care of Madame
Ramodanofsky; she died when her little son was born. The boy lived only
two days, and they were buried together. Feodor felt his loss bitterly;
he was then under a heavy cloud, and threatened, I knew, with exile;
for I have known most of the secrets of the court for many years. No
man seemed to be able to lay his finger on the boyar’s accuser, but I
never doubted that it was Vladimir.
“It was the week after the wife and baby died that I was entering the
courtyard of Ramodanofsky’s house. Homyak was just ahead of me; he
seemed to be Feodor’s evil genius. There was quite a little crowd in
the court; all the serfs were there, and in the center of the place, in
a pool of blood, lay Feodor, stricken down by the hand of an unknown
assassin, so they said. He was not dead, and I had him carried into the
house, and bound up his wounds; I thought he would live, but I was not
positive, and had to leave him still in a state of semi-consciousness.
As I crossed the courtyard, Homyak plucked at my cloak. I have always
hated the grinning creature, and made a motion to shake him off. ‘How
is the boyar?’ he asked eagerly; ‘He will live,’ I retorted curtly.
The dwarf laughed. ‘Vladimir Sergheievitch is not as good a swordsman
as I thought,’ he said. ‘It was that villain, then?’ I exclaimed
too eagerly, for Homyak took alarm, and rambled off into one of his
fanciful tales of which one can make nothing. The next day, before I
could see my patient, Vladimir Sergheievitch Ramodanofsky appeared at
the palace to announce the death of his brother, and was closeted with
the czar. I never saw even the corpse of Feodor. I protested as openly
as I dared against the foul play that, I was sure, was taking place,
but there was no room for complaints. Vladimir’s tongue is oiled, and
he had the ear of the council; he laid before them certain treasonable
papers purporting to be his brother’s, and the upshot was, that the
dead boyar’s memory was an ill savor in the nostrils of the court, and
his honors and emoluments went to Vladimir. If Feodor Sergheievitch
had lived, he would have been sent into exile. His little daughter was
turned over to the guardianship of the fiend who had endeavored to ruin
her mother and had murdered her father. The child, fortunately, was
ignorant of it all, and has grown up in her uncle’s household; and as
he has no children, will probably inherit her own, in the end. She is
rich even now, for the czar had the justice to see that she was not
robbed of all her patrimony.”
I had listened with keen interest, because I foresaw the end of the
story.
“This Boyar Ramodanofsky, then, has no children?” I said. “And the
young lady with him?”
“Is Zénaïde Feodorovna Ramodanofsky,” returned Von Gaden. “She has
inherited her mother’s beauty, and is more French than Russian.”
“Is it possible that she can be either happy or safe in such
guardianship?” I asked, my mind full of the pale and tearful face in
front of the Cathedral of the Assumption.
Von Gaden shook his head thoughtfully.
“It is impossible to read the riddle of Vladimir’s conduct towards
her,” he said. “If I thought the man had a conscience, I should say
it was troubled with remorse, for he has always seemed just in his
treatment of his niece. You know the Russian household is peculiar,
but it is more liberal than in the days when the ‘Domotróï’[4] was
composed, and the Ramodanofsky home had been Polish in aspect since the
days of Feodor’s mother, and his wife had made it French. Zénaïde has
been far better educated than the average Russian girl, and has had a
Frenchwoman with her for many years; so she speaks Polish and French
as readily as Russian. Until lately, there has been apparent accord
between the uncle and niece; but now that the boyar is anxious to
arrange a marriage for her, I hear that she has developed her father’s
spirit, and is likely to resist her uncle’s authority, as no other
Russian girl would dare to do. A young maid is an ill thing to guide!”
Von Gaden added, with a smile.
[Footnote 4: A manual of household economy of the time of Ivan the
Terrible.]
“I honor her for her resistance, since I believe I know the chosen
bridegroom;” and I told the Jew of the scene in the Kremlin.
“Viatscheslav Naryshkin?” said the physician, thoughtfully. “Yes, it
may be so. Ramodanofsky is a close adherent of the Naryshkins. I think
the Czarevna Sophia either knows or suspects something ill of him.
You know she was much with the late czar, and learned all the little
intrigues that had been handed down from her father’s court to that of
Feodor. Viatscheslav is indeed an evil fate for a pure young girl like
Zénaïde Feodorovna.”
The fire was dying down, and we both sat staring at the embers, Von
Gaden shading his face with his hand.
“I have always wanted to set it right,” he said musingly; “I have
always intended to do something. If I die now, the secret will not die
with me.”
“Was it of Feodor Ramodanofsky that Homyak spoke to-day?” I asked,
suddenly remembering the conversation.
The physician nodded.
“I do not know what Homyak had to do with it,” he said, “but he has an
evil conscience; some day he will confess.”