CHAPTER XLIII
THE WOMAN FROM SIBERIA
At last there was a movement within. Halting footsteps approached the gates, and a man’s voice, hoarse and weak, demanded: “Who is there?”
“It is Yossof,” Anne exclaimed. “How comes he here alone? Where is my mother, Yossof?”
I started as I heard that. Her mother was alive, then, though Anne had said she could not remember her, and Treherne had told me she died soon after her arrest, more than twenty years back.
“She is within and safe; Natalya is with her,” came Yossof’s quavering voice, as he labored to unbar the gates. We heard him gasping and groaning as if the task was beyond his strength, but he managed it at last. The great doors swung open, and he stood leaning against one of them. In the chill morning light his face looked gray and drawn like that of a corpse, just as it had looked that first time I saw him on the staircase at Westminster. On the weed-grown path beside him lay a revolver, as if he had dropped it out of his hand when he started to unbar the gates.
“What has happened, Yossof?” Anne asked urgently.
“Nothing; all is well, Excellency,” he answered. “I rode and gave the word as the order was, and when I reached the town the madness had begun, so I did not enter, but came on hither. My horse was spent, and I found another, but he fell and I left him and came on foot. I found none here save the Countess and Natalya; the others had fled, fearing an attack. So I closed the gates and kept guard.”
“God reward thee, friend; thou hast done well, indeed,” Anne said, and moved on to the house.
I felt a twitch on my sleeve, and Mishka muttered in my ear.
“Count our men in and then see the gate barred. We shall be safer so. I will look after Yossof, and find also what food is in the house for us all. We need it sorely!”
So I sat in my saddle beside the gateway, waiting till the last of our laggards had come in. I saw Loris lift Anne from her horse and support her up the short flight of wide stone steps that led up to the house.
An elderly peasant woman hurried out to meet them, and behind her appeared a weird unearthly figure; a tall woman, wearing a kind of loose white dressing-gown. Her gray hair was flying dishevelled about her shoulders; and her face, even seen from a distance as I saw it now, appeared like some horrible travesty of humanity. The wide open eyes were sightless, covered with a white film; the nose was flattened and distorted, the lips contracted, while the other features, forehead and cheeks and chin, were like a livid lined mask, grotesquely seamed and scarred.
The “Thing” – I could not think of it as a human being at that moment – flung out its hands, and shrieked in French, and in a voice that, though shrill with anguish, was piercingly sweet and powerful.
“They have come, – but they shall never take me again; at least they shall not take me alive. Anthony – Anthony! Where are you, my husband? Save me! do not let them take me!”
Anne hurried towards her, but with a scream she turned and sped back into the house, and some one pushed the door to, so I saw no more; but for some minutes those dreadful screams continued. They sounded almost like the shrieks of Yossof’s horse when the wolves were on him.
The men had all ridden in and were muttering to each other, crossing themselves in superstitious fear. They seemed scared to approach the house; and I believe they’d have stampeded back into the forest if I hadn’t slammed the gates and barred them again.
“It is not good to be here, Excellency,” stammered one. “This place is haunted with ghosts and devils.”
“Nonsense,” I answered roughly. “Brave men you are indeed to be frightened of a poor mad lady who has suffered so cruelly!”
By judicious bullying I got them calmed down a bit; a Russian peasant is a difficult person to manage when he’s in a superstitious funk. Mishka joined me presently, and we marched our men round to the back of the house, and set them foraging for breakfast. Fortunately there was plenty of food; the place seemed provisioned for a siege. I stood about, watching and directing them. I didn’t feel in the least hungry myself, only rather dazed.
A hand fell on my shoulder, and I found Loris beside me.
“Come and eat and sleep, my friend; we have done well so far. Mishka will take charge here.”
He looked almost as fresh and alert after that tremendous night we’d had, as if he’d just come out of his bedroom at Zostrov, when we joined him in a big dilapidated dining-room, where he’d planked some food and a couple of bottles of wine on the great oaken table, though I was as big a scarecrow as Vassilitzi, who was as used up as if he hadn’t been to bed for a week.
He had dropped his flippant manner, and was as cross and irritable as an over-tired woman.
“Think of these canaille that we feed and clothe, and risk our lives for!” he exclaimed half hysterically. “We left twenty of them here, when Anna and I started for Zizscky yesterday, – twenty armed men. And yet at the first rumor of danger they sneak away to the woods, and leave their charge, that they had sworn to defend, so that we trusted them. And it is these swine, and others like them, – dastards all! – who clamor for what they call freedom, and think if they get their vote and their Duma, all will go well. Why should we throw our lives away for such as these? We are all fools together, you and I and Anna. And you,” he turned towards me, “you are the biggest fool of us all, for you have not even the excuse that is ours! You have no stake in this accursed country and its people. Nom du diable, why do you act as if you had? You are – ”
“Calm yourself, Stepán,” Loris interposed. “Go and sleep; we all need that. And as for your cowardly servants, forget all about them. They are worth no more. Go, as I bid you!”
His level voice, his authoritative manner, had their affect, and Vassilitzi lurched away. He wasn’t really drunk; but when a man is famished and dead-tired, two or three glasses of wine will have an immense effect on him; though one glass will serve to pull him together, as it did me, to a certain extent anyhow. I was able to ask Loris about that horrible apparition I had seen.
“Yes, she is the Countess Anna Pendennis, or all that remains of her,” he answered sternly and sadly. “You have only seen her at a distance, but that was sufficient to show you what Siberia may mean to a delicately nurtured woman. If she had only died – as was given out! But she did not die. She worked as a slave, – in the prison in winter, in the fields in summer. She had frost-bite; it destroyed her sight, her face; it made her a horror to look upon. Yet still she did not die, perhaps because her mind was gone, and strength lingers in mad creatures!
“Yossof told all this. He was her fellow prisoner, and he made his escape two – no, three years or more, since. He made his way here, and Anna was good to him; as she is good to every creature in adversity. Until then she had always believed that her mother died at her birth; but when she learned the truth, she would have moved Heaven and earth to deliver her. It was accomplished at last; the Tzar was induced to sign an order for the release of this mad and maimed woman. Just when all hope seemed lost the deliverance came; and the wreck that remains of the Countess Anna Pendennis was brought here, – less than three months ago; and – ”
He broke off as the woman servant Yossof had spoken of as Natalya hurried into the room and unceremoniously beckoned him out. He rose at once and followed her, but turned at the door.
“Get some sleep while you can,” he said, nodding towards a great couch covered with a bear-skin rug. “None will disturb you here for a few hours; and we shall have either to fight or to travel again ere long.”
I sat for a minute or two, trying to think over the long tragedy that he had summed up in so few words, and wondering where Anthony Pendennis was. Surely he should have been here with his wife and daughter; and yet no one had mentioned him, and I had had no opportunity of asking about him, – had, in fact, forgotten his very existence till these last few minutes.
But consecutive thought was impossible, and I gave up the attempt, as I stumbled to the couch and fell fast asleep.
CHAPTER XLIV
AT VASSILITZI’S
Into my dreams came voices that I knew, speaking in French, in low tones which yet reached my ears distinctly.
“I think we should tell him; it is not right, or just, to keep him in ignorance.”
“No, – no, – we must not tell him; we must not!” Anne said softly, but vehemently. “We shall need him so sorely, – there are so very few whom we can really trust. Besides, why should we tell him? It would break his heart! For remember, we do not know.”
They were not dream voices, but real ones, and as I found that out, I felt I’d better let the speakers, – Anne and Loris, – know I was awake; for I’d no wish to overhear what they were saying, especially as I had a queer intuition that they were talking of me. So I sat up under the fur rug some one had thrown over me, and began to stammer out an apology in English.
The room was almost dark, and through the window, with its heavy stone frame, I saw the last glow of a stormy sunset. Anne and Loris stood there, looking out, and as I moved and spoke she broke off her sentence and came towards me.
“You have slept long, Maurice; that is well,” she said, also in English, with the pretty, deliberate accent I had always thought so charming. “There is no need for apologies; we should have roused you if necessary, but all is quiet so far. Will you come to my boudoir presently? I will give you tea there. We have scarcely had one word together as yet, – and there is so much to say! I will send lights now; some of the servants have returned and will get you all you need.”
Loris opened the door for her, and crossed back to his former post by the window, while I scrambled up, as a scared-looking, shamefaced man servant entered with a lamp, and slunk out again.
“Those wretches! They deserve the knout!” Loris said grimly, when we were alone. “They were all well armed, and yet, at the first hint of danger, they took themselves into hiding, leaving those two women defenceless here. Well, they will have to take care of themselves in future, the curs! The countess is dead,” he added abruptly.
“Dead!” I exclaimed.
“Yes. Always, even in her madness, she remembered all she had suffered, and her terror of being arrested again killed her. It is God’s mercy for her that she is at peace, – and for us, too, for we could not have taken her with us, nor have left her in charge of Natalya and these hounds, as we had intended. We shall bury her out in the courtyard yonder. It is the only way, and later, if nothing prevents, we start for the railroad.”
“Where is Pendennis?” I asked. “Is he not here?”
“No; he may join us later; I cannot say,” he answered, staring out of the window. I felt that he was embarrassed in some way; that there was something he wished to say, but hesitated at saying it. That wasn’t a bit like him, for he had always been the personification of frankness.
“I wonder if there’s a bath to be had in the house,” I said inanely, looking at my grimy hands.
“Yes, in Vassilitzi’s dressing-room; the servant will take you up,” he answered abstractedly, and as I moved towards the wide old-fashioned bell-pull by the stove, he turned and strode after me.
“Wait one moment!” he said hurriedly. “Are you still determined to go through with us? There is still time to turn back, or rather to go back to England. It would not be easy perhaps, but it would be quite possible for you to get through, via Warsaw and Alexandrovo, if you go at once.”
“Why do you ask me that?” I demanded, looking at him very straight. His blue eyes were more troubled than I had ever seen them. “Do you doubt me?”
“No, before God I trust you as I trust none other in the world but Mishka and his father! But you are a stranger, a foreigner; why should you throw your life away for us?”
“I have told you why, before. Because I only value my life so far as it may be of service to – her. If I left her and you, now, as you suggest, smuggled myself back into safety, – man, it’s not to be thought of!”
“Well, I will urge you no more,” he said sadly. “But you are sacrificing yourself for a chivalrous delusion, my friend.”
“Where’s the delusion? I know she does not love me; and I am quite content.”
Long after, I knew what he had wished to tell me then, and I can’t even now decide what I’d have done if he had spoken, whether I would have gone or stayed; but I think I’d have stayed!
When I had bathed and dressed in Vassilitzi’s dressing-room, – he was still in bed and asleep in the adjoining one, – a servant took me to Anne’s boudoir, a small bare room that yet had a cosey homelike look about it.
She was alone, sitting in a low chair, her hands lying listlessly on the lap of her black gown. Her face was even whiter and more weary than it had looked in the morning, and she had been weeping, I saw, for her long lashes were still wet; but she summoned up a smile for me, – that brave smile, that was, in a way, sadder and more moving than tears.
“You have heard that my mother is dead?” she asked, in a low voice. “She died in my arms half an hour after we got in; and I am so glad, – so glad. I have been thanking God in my heart ever since. She never knew me; she knew none of us, but Yossof; and that only because he had been near her in that dreadful place. You saw her – just for a moment; you saw something of what those long years had made of her, – and we – my God, we had thought her dead all that time!”
She shuddered, and sat staring with stern, sombre eyes at the fire, her slender fingers convulsively interlaced.
She was silent for a space, and so was I, for I could find never a word to say.
Suddenly she looked straight at me.
“Maurice Wynn, if ever the time comes when you might blame me, condemn me, – justifiably enough, – think of my mother’s history. Remember that I was brought up with one fixed purpose in life, – to avenge her, even when I only thought her dead. How much more should that vengeance be, now that I know all that she had to suffer! And she is only one among thousands who have suffered, – who are suffering as much, – yes, and more! There is but one way, – to crush, to destroy, the power that has done, – that is doing these deeds. It will not be done in our time, but we are at least preparing the way; within a few days we shall have gone some distance along it – with a rush – towards our goal. I tell you that to further this work I would – I will – do anything; sacrifice even those who are dearer to me than my own soul! Therefore, as I said, remember that, when you would condemn me for aught I have done, or shall do!”
“I can never condemn you, Anne; you know that well! The queen can do no wrong!”
The fire that had flashed into her eyes faded, dimmed, I thought, by a mist of tears.
“You are indeed a true knight, Maurice Wynn,” she said wistfully. “I do not deserve such devotion; no, don’t interrupt me, I know well what I am saying, and perhaps you also will know some day. I have deceived you in many ways; you know that well enough – ”
“As I now know your purpose,” I answered. “But why didn’t you trust me at first, Anne? When we were in London? Don’t think I’m blaming you, I’m not, really; but surely you must have known, even then, that you might have trusted me, – yes, and Mary, too.”
She was not looking at me now, but at the fire, and she paused before she answered slowly.
“It was not because I did not trust you, and her; but I did not wish to involve either of you in my fortunes. You have involved yourself in them, – my poor, foolish friend! But she, have you told her anything?”
“No. She does not even know that I am back in Russia; and before I returned I told her nothing.”
“She thinks me dead?”
“She did not know what to think; and she fretted terribly at your silence.”
“Poor Mary!” she said, with a queer little pathetic smile. “Well, perhaps her mind is at rest by this time.”
“You have written to her?”
“No, – but she has news by this time.”
“And your father?” I asked.
She shook her head.
“You must ask me nothing of him; perhaps you will learn all there is to know one day. How strangely your fate has been linked with mine! Think of Yossof meeting you that night. He had heard of my danger from the League. Ah, that traitor, Selinski! How much his miserable soul had to answer for! And he did not know whom to trust, so he set out himself, though he speaks no word of any language but his own, and bribed and begged his way to London. He found out some of the League there, at a place in Soho, learned there where Selinski lived, stole the key to his rooms, and – met you. He is a marvel, the poor good Yossof!”
“Did you know it was he, when I described him that night?” I asked impulsively.
She looked up quickly.
“I have told you, I did not wish to entangle you in my affairs, and – ”
The door opened and her cousin entered.
“Ah, you are engaged,” he exclaimed, glancing from one to the other of us.
“No, we have finished our chat,” said Anne. “Come and sit down, Stepán – for a few minutes only. We have much to do, – and far to go, to-night.”
How weary and wistful her face looked as she spoke!
CHAPTER XLV
THE CAMPAIGN AT WARSAW
A few hours later we were on the road once more, – Anne and Natalya in a travelling carriage, the rest of us mounted. The old servant was sobbing hysterically as she followed her mistress down the steps, but Anne’s white face was tearless, though she turned it for a moment with a yearning farewell glance towards the fresh-made mound in the courtyard, the grave where we had laid the corpse of her mother, in the coffin which Mishka and some of the men had made during the day.
That hurried funeral was as impressive as any I’ve ever been at, though there was no service, for it would have been impossible to summon a priest in time. Besides, I doubt if they’d have got an orthodox Russian priest to come, for the Vassilitzis were Roman Catholics, as so many of the old Polish nobility are.
In dead silence the four of us, Loris and Stepán, Mishka and I, carried the coffin down, wrapped in an old curtain of rich brocade, and stood by with bowed heads, while, still in silence, it was lowered down, pall and all.
As we turned away, I saw a face at one of the windows and knew Anne had watched us at our task. Her self-control, her powers of endurance, were marvellous. I do not believe she had slept all that day, and yet when the carriage was ready she came out with a steady step; and I heard her speak soothingly to the weeping Natalya.
That was the last I saw or heard of her for several days, for it had been arranged that she should drive to Pruschan, escorted only by Loris and her cousin and a couple of our men, and travel thence by train to Warsaw, while Mishka and I with the others would ride the whole way. It meant a couple of days’ delay in reaching Warsaw, but it seemed the safest plan; and it worked without a hitch. By twos and threes we rode into Warsaw in the early morning of the day that saw the beginning of the great strike, – and of the revolution which will end only when the Russian Empire becomes a Free Republic; and God only knows when that will come to pass!
I have been through three regular campaigns in different parts of the world during the last ten years, and had a good many thrilling experiences, one way and another; but the weeks I spent in Warsaw in the late fall of the year 1905 were the strangest and most eventful I’ve ever gone through.
As I look back now, the whole thing seems like a long and vivid nightmare, of which some few incidents stand out with dreadful distinctness, and the rest is a mere blur, a confusion of shifting figures and scenes; of noise and dust and bloodshed. Strenuous days of street rioting and fighting, in which one and all of us did our share; and when the row was over for the time being, turned our hands to ambulance work. Nights that were even more strenuous than the days, for in the night the next day’s plan had to be decided on, funds and food given out, the circulars (reporting progress and urging the people to stand fast) to be drawn up, printed, and issued. Such publications were prohibited, of course; but Warsaw, like most of the other cities, was strewn with them. People read them, flaunting them openly before the eyes of the authorities; and though the police and the soldiers tried the plan of bayoneting or shooting at sight every one whom they saw with a revolutionary print, they soon had to reserve it for any defenceless woman or even child whom they might encounter. For the great majority of the strikers were armed, and they showed themselves even quicker with their revolvers and “killers” than the soldiers were with their rifles; while every soldier killed represented one more rifle seized.
We reported ourselves on arrival, as arranged, at a spacious old house in a narrow street near the University, which thenceforth became our headquarters; and, within a few hours, a kind of hospital, also, for there were soon many wounded to be cared for.
Anne organized a band of women as amateur nurses, with Natalya at the head of them, in our house, while others were on duty elsewhere. This quarter, as I found, was a stronghold of the League; and many houses were, like ours, turned into temporary hospitals. But I gathered that comparatively few of Anne’s most influential colleagues were in sympathy with her efforts to mitigate the horrors that surrounded us. In that way, we, her own chosen band, worked almost alone. Most of the revolutionists were as callous, as brutal, as the Cossacks themselves, – women as well as men. They would march in procession, waving banners and singing patriotic songs, and, when the inevitable collision with the soldiers came, they would fight like furies, and die with a laugh of defiance on their lips. But those who came through, unscathed, had neither care nor sympathy to bestow on the fallen.
“I join your band of nurses?” a handsome vivacious little woman – evidently one of her own rank – said to Anne one day, with a scornful laugh. “I am no good at such work. Give me real work to do, a bomb to throw, a revolver to fire; I have that at least” – she touched her fur blouse significantly. “I want to fight – to kill – and if I am killed instead, well, it is but the fortune of war! But nursing – bah – I have not the patience! You are far too tender-hearted, Anna Petrovna; you ought to have been a nun; but what would our handsome Loris have done then? Oh, it is all right, ma chère; I am quite discreet. But do you suppose I have not recognized him?”
Anne looked troubled.
“And others, – do they recognize him?” she asked quietly.
“Who knows? We are too busy these days to think or care who any one is or is not. Besides, he is supposed to be dead; it was cleverly planned, that bomb affair! Was it your doing, Anna? He is too stupidly honest to have thought of it himself. There! Do not look so vexed, and have no fear that I shall denounce him. He is far too good-looking! You have a penchant for good-looking men,” she added, with an audacious glance in my direction.
It happened for once that Anne and I were alone together, until Madame Levinska turned up, in the room that was used as an office, and where between-whiles I did a good bit of secretarial work. That small untidy room represented the bureau from which the whole of this section of the League was controlled, practically by that slender, pale-faced girl in the black gown, who sat gravely regarding her frivolous acquaintance.
Her grasp of affairs was as marvellous as her personal courage in time of need; she was at once the head and the heart of the whole organization.
I felt angry with the Levinska woman for her taunt. She, and such as she, who were like so many undisciplined children, and whose ideas of revolution were practically limited to acts of violence committed in defiance or reprisal, could not even begin to understand the ideals not merely held, but maintained, by Anne and Loris, and the few others who, with them, knew that permanent good could never be accomplished by evil means. Those two were dreamers, dreaming greatly; theirs was the vision splendid, though they saw it only from far off, and strove courageously but unavailingly to draw near to it. That vision will some day become a reality; and then, – I wonder if any remembrance of those who saw it first and paved the way to its realization, will linger, save in the minds of the few who knew, and loved, and worked beside them, but who were not permitted to share their fate? I doubt it, for the world at large has a short memory!
Anne made no comment on Madame Levinska’s last remark, while I kept on with my work. I wished the woman would go, for we had much to get through this afternoon, and at any moment some serious interruption might occur; or the news we were awaiting might come.
The streets were unusually quiet to-day, hereabouts at any rate, and a few timid folk who had kept within doors of late had again ventured out. On the previous day several big meetings had been held, almost without opposition, for, although martial law was proclaimed, and thousands of soldiers had entered the city, “to repress disturbances” many of the troops, including a whole regiment of hussars from Grodno, had refused to fire on the people. Since then there was a decided abatement of hostilities; though one dared not hope that it meant more than a mere lull in the storm.
The railway and telegraph strikes were maintained, but plenty of news got through, – news that the revolution was general; that Kronstadt and Riga were in flames; Petersburg and Moscow in a state of anarchy; that many of the troops had mutinied and were fighting on the side of the revolutionists, while the rest were disheartened and tired out. During the last few hours persistent rumors had reached us that the Tzar was on the point of issuing a manifesto granting civil and political liberty to the people; a capitulation on all important points in fact. If the news were true it was magnificent. Such of us as were optimists believed it would be the beginning of a new and glorious era. Already we had disseminated such information as had reached us, by issuing broadcast small news-sheets damp from the secret printing-press in the cellar of the old house. A week or two ago that press would have had to be shifted to a fresh hiding-place every night; but in these days the police had no time for making systematic inquisitions; it was all they could do to hold their own openly against the mob.
And now we were waiting for fresh and more definite tidings, and I know Anne’s heart beat high with hope, though we had not exchanged a dozen words before Madame Levinska made her unwelcome appearance; and Anne, who had but just returned to the room after going the round of our amateur hospital, tackled her about the nursing.
She stayed for a few minutes longer, continuing her irresponsible chatter and then, to my relief, anyhow, took herself off, announcing airily that she was going to see if there was any fun stirring.
“Do not be reckless, Marie,” Anne called after her. “You do no good by that, and may do much harm.”
“Have no fear for me, little nun,” she retorted gaily, over her shoulder. “I can take care of myself.”
“She sees only, – cares only for the excitement, the poor Marie!” I heard Anne murmur with a sigh, as she crossed to the window and watched her friend’s retreating figure; a jaunty audacious little figure it was!
There was a clatter and jingle below, and three or four Cossacks cantered along. One of them called out something to Madame Levinska, and she turned and shrilled back an answer, her black eyes flashing.
He reined up and slashed at her with his nagaika.
Even before the jagged lead caught her face, ripping it from brow to chin, she drew her revolver and fired pointblank at him, missed him, and fell, as he spurred his horse on to her and struck again and again with his terrible whip.
In an instant the street was in an uproar.