CHAPTER XLVIII
THE GRAND DUCHESS PASSES
I’ve heard it said that sick or wounded people always die if they have no wish to live, but that’s not true. I wanted to die as badly as any one ever did, but yet I lived. I suppose I must have a lot of recuperative energy; anyhow, next time I woke up I felt pretty much as usual, except for the dull throb of the wound across my forehead, which some one had scientifically strapped up. My physical pain counted as nothing compared with the agony of shame and grief I suffered in my soul, as, bit by bit, I recollected all that had happened. I had failed in my trust, failed utterly. I was left to guard her; I ought to have forbidden – prevented – her going out into the street at all; and, when the worst came, I ought to have died with her.
I tried to say something of this to Loris when I was face to face with him once more, in the room where Anne and I had been working when that ill-omened woman, Marie Levinska, interrupted us; but he stopped me with an imperative gesture.
“Do not reproach yourself, my friend. All that one man could do, you did. I know that well, and I thank you. One last service you shall do, if you are fit for it. You shall ride with us to-night when we take her away. Mishka has told you of the arrangements? That is well. If we get through, you will not return here; that is why I have sent for you now.”
“Not return?” I repeated.
“No,” he answered quietly but decisively. “Once before I begged you to leave us, now I command you to do so; not because I do not value you, but because – she – would have wished it. Wait, hear me out! You have done noble service in a cause that can mean nothing to you, except – ”
“Except that it is a cause that the lady I served lived, – and died – for, sir,” I interrupted.
More than once before I had spoken of her to him as the woman we both loved; but now the other words seemed fittest; for not half an hour back I had learned the truth, that, I think, I had known all along, – that she who lay in her coffin in the great drawing-room yonder was, if her rights had been acknowledged, the Grand Duchess Loris of Russia. It was Vassilitzi who told me.
“They were married months ago, in Paris, – before she went to England,” he had said, and for a moment a bitter wave of memory swept over me, though I fought against it. Hadn’t I decided long since that the queen could do no wrong, and therefore the deception she had practised counted for nothing? All that really mattered was that I loved her in spite of all; asked nothing more than to be allowed to serve her.
“You served her under a delusion,” he rejoined with stern sadness. “And now it is no longer possible for you to serve her even so. I cannot discuss the matter with you; I cannot explain it, – I would not if I could. Only this I repeat. I request – command you, to make your way out of this country as soon as possible, and rejoin your friends in England, or America, – where you will. It may mean more to you than you dare hope or imagine. You will have some difficulty probably, though some of the trains are running again now. I think your safest plan will be to ride to Kutno – or if necessary even to Alexandrovo. Here is a passport, permitting you to leave Russia; it is made out in the name you assumed when you returned as ‘William Pennington Gould,’ and is quite in order. And I must ask you, for the sake of our friendship, to accept these” – he took a roll of notes out of the drawer of the writing-table – “and, as a memento, – this. It is the only decoration I am able to confer on a most chivalrous gentleman.”
He held out a little case, open, and I took it with an unsteady hand. It contained a miniature of Anne, set in a rim of diamonds. I looked at it, – and at him, – but I could not speak; my heart was too full.
“There is no need of words, my friend; we understand each other well, you and I,” he continued, rising and placing his hands on my shoulders. “You will do as I wish, – as I entreat – insist – ?”
“I would rather remain with you!” I urged. “And fight on, for the cause – ”
He shook his head.
“It is a lost cause; or at least it will never be won by us. The manifesto, the charter of peace! What is it? A dead letter. Nicholas issued it indeed, but his Ministers ignore it, and therefore he is helpless, his charter futile and the reign of terror continues, – will continue. Therefore I bid you go, and you must obey. So this is our parting, for though we shall meet, we shall be alone together no more. Therefore, God be with you, my friend!”
When next I saw him he stood with drawn sword, stern and stately, foremost among the guard of honor round the catafalque in the great drawing-room, where all that remained of the woman we both loved lay in state, ere it fared forth on its last journey.
The old house was full of subdued sounds, for as soon as darkness fell, by ones and twos, men and women were silently admitted and passed as silently up the staircase to pay their last homage to their martyr.
Nearly all of them had flowers in their hands, – red flowers, – sometimes only a single spray, but always those fatal geranium blossoms that were the symbol of the League. They laid them on the white pall, or scattered them on the folds that swept the ground, till the coffin seemed raised above a sea of blood.
Every detail of that scene is photographed on my memory. The great room, hung with black draperies and brilliantly lighted by a multitude of tall wax candles; the air heavy with incense and the musky odor of the flowers; the two priests in gorgeous vestments who knelt on either side, near the head of the coffin, softly intoning the prayers for the dead; the black-robed nuns who knelt at the foot, silent save for the click of their rosaries; and the ghostly procession of men and women, many of them wounded, all haggard and wan, that passed by, and paused to gaze on the face that lay framed, as it were, beneath a panel of glass in the coffin-lid, from which the pall was drawn back. Many of them, men as well as women, were weeping passionately; some pressed their lips to the glass; others raised their clenched hands as if to register a vow of vengeance; a few, – a very few, – knelt in prayer for a brief moment ere they passed on.
I stood at my post, as one of the guard, and watched it all in a queer, impersonal sort of way, as if my soul was somehow outside my body.
Although I stood some distance away, the quiet face under the glass seemed ever before my eyes; for I had looked on it before this solemn ceremonial began. How fair it was, – and yet how strange; though it was unmarred, unless there was a wound hidden under the strip of white ribbon bound across the forehead and almost concealed by the softly waving chestnut hair. But even the peace of death had not been able to banish the expression of anguish imprinted on the lovely features. Above the closed eyelids, with their long, dark lashes, the brows were contracted in a frown, and the mouth was altered, the white teeth exposed, set firmly in the lower lip. Still she was beautiful, but with the beauty of a Medusa. I could not think of that face as the one I had known and loved; it filled me with pity and horror and indignation, indeed; but – it was the face of a stranger.
Why had I not been content to remember her as I had known her in life! She seemed so immeasurably removed from me now; and that not merely because I could no longer think of her as Anne Pendennis, – only as “The Grand Duchess Anna Catharine Petrovna, daughter of the Countess Anna Vassilitzi-Pendennis, and wife of Loris Nicolai Alexis, Grand Duke of Russia,” as the French inscription on the coffin-plate ran, – but also because the mystery that had surrounded her in life seemed more impenetrable than ever now that she was dead.
Where was her father, to whom she had seemed so devotedly attached when I first knew her? Even supposing he was dead, why was he ignored in that inscription, save for the mere mention of his surname, the only indication of her mixed parentage. She had never spoken of him since that day at the hunting-lodge when she had said I must ask nothing concerning him. I had obeyed her in that, as in all else, and had even refrained from questioning Vassilitzi or any other who might have been able to tell me anything about Anthony Pendennis. Besides, there had been no time for queries or conjectures during all the feverish excitement of these days in Warsaw. But now, in this brief and solemn interlude, all the old problems recurred to my mind, as I stood on guard in the death-chamber; and I knew that I could never hope to solve them.
The ceremony was over at last. As in a dream I followed the others, and, at a low-spoken word of command, filed past the catafalque, with a last military salute, though I was no longer in uniform, for Mishka had brought me a suit of civilian clothes.
In the same dazed way I found myself later riding near the head of the procession that passed through the dark silent streets, and out into the open country. I didn’t even feel any curiosity or astonishment that a strong escort of regular cavalry – lancers – accompanied us, or when I recognized the officer in command as young Mirakoff, whom I had last seen on the morning when I was on my way to prison in Petersburg. He didn’t see me, – probably he wouldn’t have known me if he had, – and to this day I don’t know how he and his men came to be there, or how the whole thing was arranged. Anyhow, none molested us; and slowly, through the sleeping city, and along the open road, the cortège passed, ghostlike, in the dead of night. The air was piercingly cold, but the sky was clear, like a canopy of velvet spangled with great stars.
Mishka rode beside me, and at last, when we seemed to have been riding for an eternity, he laid his hand on my rein, and whispered hoarsely, “Now.”
Almost without a sound we left the ranks, turned up a cross-road, and, wheeling our horses at a few paces distant, waited for the others to go by; more unreal, more dreamlike than ever. Save for the steady tramp of the horses’ feet, the subdued jingle of the harness and accoutrements, they might have been a company of phantoms. I saw the gleam of the white pall above the black bulk of the open hearse, – watched it disappear in the darkness, and knew that the Grand Duchess had passed out of my life forever.
Still I sat, bareheaded, until the last faint sounds had died away, and the silence about us was only broken by the night whisper of the bare boughs above us.
“Come; for we have yet far to go,” Mishka said aloud, and started down the cross-road at a quick trot.
CHAPTER XLIX
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!”