horse, following the imperial conveyance, were instantly killed. The
Czar stepped out from amid the debris on to the torn and riven snow.
He stumbled, and took a proffered arm. They found blood on the cushions
afterwards. At that moment the only thought in his mind seemed to be
anger, and he glanced at the dying Cossack--at the dead baker-boy. The
pavement and the road were strewn with wounded--some lying quite still,
others attempting to lift themselves with numbed and charred limbs. It
was very cold.
Ryssakoff, who had thrown the bomb, was already in the hands of his
captors. Had the crowd been larger, had the official element been
weaker, he would have been torn to pieces then and there. The Czar went
towards him. Some say that he spoke to him. But no clear account of
those few moments was ever obtained. The noise, the confusion, the
terror of it seemed to have deadened the faculties of all who took part
in this tragedy, and they could only act mechanically, as men who were
walking in their sleep.
Already a crowd had collected. Every moment added to its numbers.
“Stand back! Stand back! A second bomb is coming!” cried more than one
voice. There are a hundred witnesses ready to testify that they heard
this strange warning. But no man seemed to heed it. There are moments in
the lives of men when their contempt for death raises them at one bound
to the heights of immortality.
Those around the Czar urged him to quit the spot at once. In such a
crowd of people there must be some enemies. At last he turned and went
towards the sleigh which had been brought forward to take the place of
the shattered carriage. He was pale now, and walked with an effort.
The onlookers stood aside to make a passage for him. Many raised their
hats, and made silent manifestations of their respect and pity.
One man, alone, stood with folded arms, hat on head, and watched the
Czar. He was on the pavement, with his back to the iron gate leading to
the canal. The pavement was not six feet wide, and the Czar came along
it towards him. For a moment they faced each other. Then the freed
son of the serf raised both hands and threw his missile on the stones
between them--at the feet of the man who had cut the chain of his
slavery.
It was the serf who shrieked. The Emperor uttered no plaint. A puff of
white-gray smoke rose to heaven. And those who watched there no doubt
took note of it.
A shower of snow and human debris was thrown into the air. The very
stones of the pavement were displaced.
The Emperor was on the ground against the railings. He was blind. One
leg was gone, the other torn and mutilated to the hip. It was pitiful.
He uttered no sound, but sought to move his bare limbs on the snow.
This was the end--the payment. He discharged his debt without a murmur.
He had done the right--against the counsel of the wise, against
his crown and his own greatness, against his purse and his father's
teaching. He had followed the dictates of his own conscience. He had
done more than any other Czar, before or since, for the good of Russia.
And this was the payment!
The other--the man who had thrown the bomb--was already dead. The
terrific explosion had sent his soul hard after the puff of white smoke,
and in the twinkling of an eye he stood at the bar of the Great Assize.
It is to be hoped that he made a good defence there, and did not stammer
in the presence of his Judge.
The Czar's gentlemen in attendance were all killed or wounded. He was
left to the care of his Cossack escort, who were doing what they could
to succor him--though, being soldiers, they knew that he had passed
beyond all human aid. The crowd parted to make way for a tall man who
literally threw aside all who stood in his path. It was the Emperor's
brother, the Grand Duke Michael, brought hither by the sound of the
first explosion. He knelt on the blood-stained snow and spoke to the
dying man.
The sleigh towards which he had been walking was now brought forward
again, and the Czar was lifted from the snow. There was no doctor near.
The mob drew back in dumb horror. In the crowd stood Cartoner, brought
hither by that instinct which had made him first among the Vultures--the
instinct that took him to the battle-field, where he was called upon to
share the horror and reap none of the glory.
His quiet eyes were ablaze for once with a sudden, helpless anger. He
could not even give way to the first and universal impulse to kill the
killer.
He stood motionless through the brief silence that succeeded to the
second explosion. There is a silence that follows those great events
brought about by a man which seems to call aloud for a word from God.
Then, because it was his duty to draw his buzzing thoughts together, to
be watchful and quick, to think and act while others stood aghast, he
took one last look at the dying Emperor, and turned to make his way
from the crowd while yet he could. He had pieced together, with the
slow accuracy that Deulin envied him, the small scraps of information
obtained from one source or another in Warsaw, in London from Captain
Cable, in St. Petersburg from half a dozen friends. This was Poland's
opportunity. A sudden inspiration had led him to look for the centre of
the evil, not in Warsaw, but in St. Petersburg. And that which other men
called his luck had brought him within sound of the first explosion by
the side of the Catherine Canal.
He passed through a back street and out into wider thoroughfares. He
hurried as much as was prudent, and in a few moments was beyond the
zone, as it were, of alarm and confusion. A sleigh came towards him. The
driver was half asleep, and looked about him with a placid, stupid face.
Here was a man who had heard nothing.
Cartoner called him, and did not wait for him to descend to unhook the
heavy leather apron.
“The telegraph office,” he said.
And when the driver had settled down to his usual breakneck speed, he
urged him to go faster. The passers on the pavement were going about
their ordinary business now, bent on paying Sunday calls or taking
Sunday exercise. None knew yet what had taken place a few hundred yards
away.
Cartoner sat with clenched teeth and thought. He had a strong grasp over
his own emotions, but his limbs were shaking inside his thick furs. He
made a supreme effort of memory. It was a moment in a lifetime, and he
knew it. Which is not always the case, for great moments often appear
great only when we look back at them.
He had not his code-books with him. He dared not carry them in the
streets of St. Petersburg, where arrest might meet him at any corner by
mistake or on erroneous suspicion. His head was stored with a thousand
things to be remembered. Could he trust his memory to find the right
word, or the word that came nearest to the emergency of this moment?
Could he telegraph that the Emperor was dead when he had last seen him
living, but assuredly feeling his way across the last frontier? The
Czar must assuredly be dead before a telegram despatched now could reach
England. It was a risk. But Cartoner was of a race of men who seem to
combine with an infinite patience the readiness to take a heavy risk at
a given moment.
The telegraph office was quiet. The clerks were dignified and sedate
behind their caging--stiff and formal within their semi-military
uniform. They knew nothing. As soon as the news reached them the
inexorable wire windows would be shut down, and no unofficial telegrams
could be despatched from Russia.
Cartoner had five minutes' start, perhaps, in front of the whole world.
Five minutes might suffice to flash his news beyond the reach of recall.
The sense of discipline was strong in him. His first message was to
London--a single word from the storehouse of his infallible memory.
He sent a second telegram to Deulin, in Warsaw, which was no longer.
The first message might reach its destination. The chances of the second
were not so good, and the second might mean life or death to Wanda. He
walked slowly back towards the double doors. He might even gain a minute
there, he thought, by simulating clumsiness with the handle should any
one wish to enter in haste. He was at the outer door when a man hurried
up the steps. This was a small man, with a pale and gentle face, and
eyes in which a dull light seemed to smoulder.
Cartoner detained him on the step for quite half a minute by
persistently turning the handle the wrong way. When at length he was
allowed to enter, he swore at the Englishman in a low voice as he
passed, which Captain Cable would have recognized had he heard it. The
two men looked at each other in the twilight between the doors. Each
knew that the other knew. Then the little man passed in. The front of
his black coat had a white stain upon it, as if he had been holding
a loaf of bread under his arm. Cartoner noticed it, and remembered it
afterwards, when he learned that the bombs which seem to have been sown
broadcast in the streets of St. Petersburg that day were painted white.
He crossed the square to the Winter Palace, and stood with the silent
crowd there until the bells told all Petersburg the news that the
mightiest monarch had been called to stand before a greater than any
earthly throne.
XXXII
A LOVE-LETTER
The next morning Miss Netty Cahere took her usual walk in the Saski
Gardens. It was much warmer at Warsaw than at St. Petersburg, and the
snow had melted, except where it lay in gray heaps on either side of the
garden walks. The trees were not budding yet, but the younger bark of
the small branches was changing color. The first hidden movements of
spring were assuredly astir, and Netty felt kindly towards all mankind.
She wished at times that there were more people in Warsaw to be kind to.
It is dull work being persistently amiable to one's elderly relatives.
Netty sometimes longed for a little more excitement, especially,
perhaps, for the particular form of excitement which leads one-half of
the world to deck itself in bright colors in the spring for the greater
pleasure of the other half.
She wished that Cartoner would come back; for he was an unsolved problem
to her, and there had been very few unsolved male problems in her brief
experience. She had usually found men very easy to understand, and the
failure to achieve her simple purpose in this instance aroused, perhaps,
an additional attention. She thought it was that, but she was not quite
sure. She had not arrived at a clear definition in her own mind as to
what she thought of Cartoner. She was quite sure, however, that he was
different from other men.
She had not seen Kosmaroff again, and the memory of her strange
interview with him had lost sharpness. But she was conscious of a
conviction that he had merely to come again, and he would regain at once
the place he had so suddenly and violently taken in her thoughts. She
knew that he was in the background of her mind, as it were, and might
come forward at any moment. She often walked down the Bednarska to the
river, and displayed much interest in the breaking up of the ice.
As to Prince Martin Bukaty, she had definitely settled that he was nice.
It is a pity that the word nice as applied to the character of a young
man dimly suggests a want of interest. He was so open and frank that
there was really no mystery whatever about him. And Netty rather liked
a mystery. Of course it was most interesting that he should be a prince.
Even Aunt Julie, that great teacher of equality, closed her lips after
speaking of the Bukatys, with an air of tasting something pleasant. It
was a great pity that the Bukatys were so poor. Netty gave a little sigh
when she thought of their poverty.
In the mean time, Martin was the only person at hand. She did not count
Paul Deulin, who was quite old, of course, though interesting enough
when he chose to be. Netty walked backward and forward down the broad
walk in the middle of those gardens, which the government have so
frequently had to close against public manifestations, and wondered
why Martin was so long in coming. For the chance meetings had gradually
resolved themselves into something very much like an understanding,
if not a distinct appointment. All people engaging in the game of love
should be warned that it is a game which never stands still, but must
move onward or backward. You may play it one day in jest, and find that
it must be played in earnest next time. You may never take it up just
where you left it, for the stake must always be either increasing or
diminishing. And this is what makes it rather an interesting game. For
you may never tell what it may grow to, and while it is in progress,
none ever believe that it will have an end.
Netty liked Martin very much. Had he been a rich prince instead of a
poor one, she would, no doubt, have liked him very much better. And it
is a thousand pities that more young persons have not their affections
in such practical and estimable control. Though, to be strictly just, it
is young men who are guilty in this respect, much more than the maidens
with whom they fall in love. It is rare, in fact, that a young girl is
oblivious to the practical side of that which many mothers teach them to
be the business of their lives. But then it is very rare that a girl is
in love with the man she marries. Sometimes she thinks she is. Sometimes
she does not even go so far as that.
Netty was, no doubt, engaged in these and other golden dreams of
maidenhood as she walked in the Saski Gardens this March morning.
The faces of those who passed her were tranquil enough. The news of
yesterday's doings in St. Petersburg had not reached Warsaw, or, at
all events, had not been given to the public yet. Even rumor is
leaden-footed in this backward country.
Presently Netty sat down. Martin had never kept her waiting, and she
felt angry and rather more anxious to see him, perhaps, than she had
ever been before. The seats were, of course, deserted, for the air was
cold. Down the whole length of the gardens there was only one other
occupant of the polished stone benches--an old man, sitting huddled up
in his shabby sheepskin coat. He seemed to be absorbed in thought, or in
the dull realization of his own misery, and took no note of the passers.
Netty hardly glanced at him. She was looking impatiently towards the
Kotzebue gate, which was the nearest to the Bukaty Palace of all the
entrances to the Saski Gardens. At length she saw Martin, not in the
gardens, but in the Kotzebue Street itself. She recognized his hat and
fair hair through the railings. He was walking with some one who might
almost have been Kosmaroff, better dressed than usual. But they parted
hurriedly before she could make sure, and Martin came towards the gate
of the gardens. He had evidently seen her and recognized her, but he did
not come to her with his usual joyous hurry. He paused, and looked all
ways before quitting the narrower path and coming out into the open.
Netty was at the lower end of the central avenue, close to the old
palace of the king of Saxony, where there is but little traffic; for the
two principal thoroughfares are at the farther corner of the gardens,
near to the two market-places and the Jewish quarter.
It thus happened that there was no one in Netty's immediate vicinity
except the old man, huddled up in his ragged coat. Martin paused to
satisfy himself that he was not followed, and then came towards her,
but Netty could see that he did not intend to stop and speak. He did not
even bow as he approached, but passing close by her he dropped a folded
note at her feet, and walked on without looking round.
There were others passing now in either direction, but Netty seemed to
know exactly how to act. She sat with her foot on the note until they
had gone. Then she stooped and picked up the paper. The precautions were
unnecessary, it seemed, for no one was even looking in her direction.
“I must not speak to you,” Martin wrote, “for there is danger in it--not
to me, but to yourself. That of which you will not let me tell you is
for to-night. Whatever you hear or see, do not leave your rooms at the
Europe. I have already provided for your safety. There is great news,
but no one knows it yet. Whatever happens, I shall always be thinking
of you, and--no! I must not say that. But to-morrow I may be able to say
it--who knows! I shall walk to the end of the garden and back again; but
I must not even bow to you. If you go away before I pass again, leave
something on the seat that I may keep until I see you again--your glove
or a flower, to be my talisman.”
Netty smiled as she read the letter, and glanced at Martin down the
length of the broad walk, with the tolerant softness still in her eyes.
She rather liked his old-fashioned chivalry, which is certainly no
longer current to-day, and would, perhaps, be out of place between
two young persons united fondly by a common sport or a common taste in
covert-coating.
Martin was at the far end of the gardens now, and in a minute would turn
and come towards her again. She had not long in which to think and to
make up her mind. She had, as Martin wrote, prevented him from telling
her of those political matters in which he was engaged. But she knew
that events were about to take place which might restore the fortunes of
the Bukatys. Should these fortunes be restored she knew that the prince
would be the first man in Poland. He might even be a king. For the crown
had gone by ballot in the days when Poland was a monarchy.
Netty had some violets pinned in the front of her jacket. She
thoughtfully removed them, and sat looking straight in front of
her--absorbed in maiden calculations. If Prince Bukaty should be first
in Poland, Prince Martin must assuredly be second. She laid the violets
on the stone seat. Martin had turned now though he was still far away.
She looked towards him, still thinking rapidly. He was a man of honor.
She knew that. She had fully gauged the honor of more than one man;
had found it astonishingly reliable. The honor of women was quite
a different question. That which Prince Martin said in the day
of adversity he would assuredly adhere to in other circumstances.
“Besides--” And she smiled a thoughtful smile of conscious power as she
bent her head to rebutton her jacket and arrange her furs.
She tore the letter into small pieces and threw it behind the heap of
snow at the back of the seat upon which she sat. Then she rose, looked
at the bunch of violets still lying where she had laid them, and walked
slowly away. She glanced over her shoulder at the old man sitting
beneath the leafless trees at the other side of the broad avenue. He sat
huddled within the high collar of his coat and heeded nothing. There was
no one near to the seat that she had just vacated, and Martin was now
going towards it. She hurried to the Saxon Palace, and as she passed
beneath its arches turned just in time to see Martin bend over the stone
seat and take up his talisman. He did it without disguise or haste.
Any one may pick up a flower, especially one that has been dropped by a
pretty girl.
Martin walked on, and turned to the left down the path that leads to the
Kotzebue gate.
Then the old man on the seat nearly opposite to that upon which Netty
had been sitting seemed to arouse himself from the lethargy of misery.
He turned his head within his high collar, and watched Martin until
he was out of sight. Netty had disappeared almost at once beneath the
arches of the covered passages of the palace.
After a pause the old man rose, and crossing the pathway, sat down
on the seat vacated by Netty. He waited there a few minutes until the
passers-by had their backs turned towards him, and there was no one near
enough to notice his movements. Then he stepped, nimbly enough, across
the bank of gray snow, and collected the pieces of the letter which
Netty had thrown there. He brought them back to the stone seat and
spread them out there, like parts of a puzzle. He was, it seemed, an
expert at such things; for in a moment he had them in order, and had
pieced together the upper half of the paper. Moreover, he must have been
a linguist; the note was written in English, and this Warsaw waif of the
public gardens seemed to read it without difficulty.
“That of which you will not let me tell you is for to-night,” he
read, and instantly felt for his watch within the folds of his ancient
clothing. It was not yet mid-day. But the man seemed suddenly in a
flurry, as if there were more to be done before nightfall than he could
possibly compass.
He collected the papers and placed them carefully inside a shabby purse.
Then he rose and departed in the direction of the governor-general's
palace. He must have been pressed for time, for he quite forgot to walk
with the deliberation that would have beseemed his apparent years.
Netty walked round the outside of the gardens, and ultimately turned
into the Senatorska, the street recommended to her by her uncle as being
composed of the best shops in the town. Oddly enough, she met Joseph
Mangles there--not loitering near the windows, but hurrying along.
“Ah!” he said, “thought I might meet you here.”
He was, it appeared, as simple as other old gentlemen, and leaped to the
conclusion that if Netty was out-of-doors she must necessarily be in the
Senatorska. He suited his pace to hers. His head was thrust forward, and
he appeared to have something to think about, for he offered no remark
for some minutes.
“The mail is in,” he then observed, in his usual lugubrious tone, as if
the post had brought him his death-warrant.
“Ah!” answered Netty, glancing up at him. She was sure that something
had happened. “Have you had important news?”
“Had nothing by the mail,” he answered, looking straight in front of
him. And Netty asked no more questions.
“Your aunt Jooly,” he said, after a pause, “has had an interesting mail.
She has been offered the presidency--”
“Of the United States?” asked Netty, with a little laugh, seeing that
Joseph paused.
“Not yet,” he answered, with deep gravity. “Of the Massachusetts Women
Bachelors' Federation.”
“Oh!”
“She'll accept,” opined Joseph P. Mangles, lugubriously.
“Is it a great honor?”
“There are different sorts of greatness,” Joseph replied.
“What is the Massachusetts Women Bachelors' Federation?”
Joseph Mangles did not reply immediately. He stepped out into the road
to allow a lady to pass. He was an American gentleman of the old school,
and still offered to the stronger sex that which they intend to take for
themselves in the future.
“Think it is like the blue-ribbon army,” he said, when he returned to
Netty's side. “The sight of the ribbon induces the curious to offer
the abstainer drink. The Massachusetts Bachelor Women advertise their
membership of the Federation, just to see if there is any man around who
will induce 'em to resign.”
“Is Aunt Julie pleased?” asked Netty.
“Almighty,” was the brief reply. “And she will accept it. She will
marry the paid secretary. They have a paid secretary. President usually
marries him. He is not a bachelor-woman. They're mostly worms--the men
that help women to make fools of themselves.”
This was very strong language for Uncle Joseph, who usually seemed
to have a latent admiration for his gifted sister's greatness. Netty
suspected that he was angry, or put out by something else, and made the
Massachusetts Women Bachelors bear the brunt of his displeasure.
“She is a masterful woman is Aunt Jooly,” he said; “she'll give him his
choice between dismissal and--and earthly paradise.”
Netty laughed soothingly, and glanced up at him again. He was walking
along with huge, lanky strides, much more hurriedly than he was aware
of. His head was thrust forward, and his chin went first as if to push a
way through a crowded world.
And it was borne in upon Netty that Uncle Joseph had received some
order; that he was pluming his ragged old wings for flight.
XXXIII
THIN ICE
It was not yet mid-day when Paul Deulin called at the Bukaty Palace.
“Is the prince in?” he asked. “Is he busy?” he added, when the servant
had stood back with a gesture inviting him to enter. But the man only
shrugged his shoulders with a smile. The prince, it appeared, was never
busy. Deulin found him, in fact, in an arm-chair in his study, reading a
German newspaper.