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.
The whole thing happened far more quickly than it can be told. I dragged Anne back from the window, slammed the shutters to,—for one of the Cossacks’ favorite tricks was to fire at any one seen at a window in the course of a street row,—and, curtly bidding Anne stay where she was for the moment, rushed downstairs and out into the street, revolver in hand.
Mishka and half a dozen of our men were before me; there were very few of us in the house just now; most of the others were with Loris and Vassilitzi, attending a big procession and meeting in Marchalkowskaia, with their usual object,—to maintain order as far as possible, and endeavor to prevent conflicts between the troops and the people. It was astonishing how much Loris had achieved in this way, even during these last terrible days of riot and bloodshed. He was ever on the alert; he seemed to know by instinct how to seize the right moment to turn the temper of the crowd or the soldiers, and avert disaster; and his splendid personality never failed in its almost magnetic effect on every one who came in contact with it. He was a born leader of men!
And, although he was always to the fore in every affair, as utterly reckless of his own safety as he was anxious to secure the safety of others, he had hitherto come unscathed through everything, though a couple of our men had been killed outright, several others badly wounded, and the rest of us had got a few hard knocks one way or other. I’d had a bullet through my left arm, the arm that was broken in the scrimmage outside Petersburg in June, a flesh wound only, luckily, though it hurt a bit when I had time to think of it,—which wasn’t often.
By the time we got into the street, the affair was over. The Cossacks, urging their ponies at the usual wild gallop, and firing wantonly up at the houses, since the people who had been in the street had rushed for cover, were almost out of sight; and on the road and sidewalk near at hand were several killed and wounded,—mostly women,—besides Madame Levinska, who had been the cause of it all, and had paid with her life.
She was a hideous sight, she who five minutes before had been so gay, so audacious, so full of vivacity. The brutes had riddled her prostrate body with bullets, slashed at it with their whips, trampled it under their horses’ hoofs; and it lay huddled, shapeless, with scarce a semblance to humanity left in it.
I head a low, heartfelt cry, and saw Anne beside me, her fair face ashen white, her eyes dilated with horror and compassion, as she stared at her friend’s corpse.
“Go back!” I said roughly. “You can do nothing for her. And we will see to the rest; go back, I say. There may be more trouble.”
“My duty is here,” she said quietly, and passed on to bend over a woman who was kneeling and screaming beside a small body,—that of a lad about eight or nine years old,—which lay very still.
It was, as I well knew, useless to argue with Anne; so I went on with my ambulance work in grim silence, keeping near her, and letting the others go to and fro, helping the wounded into shelter and carrying away the dead. Natalya had run out also and joined her mistress. Yossof was not at hand; it was he whom we expected to bring the news we were awaiting so eagerly. He had come with us to Warsaw, and though he lived in the Ghetto among his Jewish kindred, was constantly back and forth. He was invaluable as a messenger,—a spy some might call him,—although he knew no language but Yiddish and Polack, and the queer Russian lingo that was a mingling of all three. But of course he learned a great deal from his fellow Jews. Hunted, persecuted, wretched as they are, the Polish and Russian Jews always have, or can command, money, and the way they get hold of news is nothing short of marvellous,—in the Warsaw Ghetto, anyhow!
There was quite a crowd around us soon, as the people who had fled before the Cossacks came back again,—weeping, gesticulating, shouting imprecations on the Tzar, the Government, the soldiers,—as they always did when they were excited; but, as usual, doing very little to help.
All at once there was a bigger tumult near at hand, and a mob came pouring along the street, a disorderly procession of men and women and little children, flaunting banners, waving red handkerchiefs, laughing, crying, shouting, and singing, as if they were more than half delirious with joy and excitement. And what was more remarkable, there were neither police nor soldiers in sight, nor any sign of Loris or his men. Many such processions occurred in Warsaw that day, when the great news came,—news that was soon to be so horribly discounted and annulled; and that, for me, was rendered insignificant, even in that first hour, by the great tragedy that followed hard upon its coming,—the tragedy that will overshadow all my life. Even after the lapse of years I can scarcely bring myself to write of it, though every incident is stamped indelibly on my brain. Clear before my eyes now rises Anne’s face, as, with her arm about the poor mother—who was half fainting—she turned and looked at the joyous rabble.
“What is it?” she cried, and at the same instant Yossof hurried up, and spoke breathlessly to her.
She listened to his message with parted lips, her eyes starry with the light of ecstatic joy.
“What is it?” I asked in my turn, for I couldn’t catch what Yossof said.
“It’s true,—it’s true; oh, thank God for all His mercies! The end is in sight, Maurice; the new era is beginning—has begun. The Tzar has yielded; he has issued the manifesto, granting all demands—”
I stood staring at her, stricken dumb, not by the news she told, but by her unearthly beauty. The face that was so worn with all the toil and conflict and anxiety of these strenuous days and weeks was transfigured; and above it her red-gold hair shone like a crown of glory.
I know what was in her mind at that moment,—the thought that all had not been in vain, that the long struggle was almost ended, victory in sight; with freedom for the oppressed, cessation of bloodshed, a gradual return to law and order, the patient building up of a new civilization. Had I not heard her and Loris speak in that strain many times, the last only a few hours back, when the reassuring rumors began to strengthen?
“They were dreamers, dreaming greatly!”
For a few seconds only did I stand gazing at her, for the mob was upon us. It jostled us apart, swept us along with it, and, as I fought my way to rejoin her—she and Natalya still supported the woman whose little son had just been killed—a quick revulsion of feeling came over me, and with it a queer premonition of imminent evil.
The mob was so horrible; made up for the most part of the scum of Warsaw, reeking with vodka, drunk with liquor and excitement.
Pah! They were not fit for the freedom they clamored for, and yet it was for them and for others like them, that she toiled and plotted in peril of her life!
Before I could win to her side, a warning cry arose ahead, followed instantly by the crackle of rifle fire, the phut of revolver shots, yells, shrieks, an infernal din. A squadron of Cossacks was charging the crowd from the front, and as it surged back, the same hellish sounds broke from the rear. More soldiers were following, the mob was between two fires,—trapped.
Gasping, bleeding, I struggled against the rush, striving to make my way back to where I could see the gleam of Anne’s golden hair, close against the wall. I guessed that, with her usual resource, she had drawn her companions aside when the turmoil began, and they had their backs to the wall of one of the houses.
The soldiers were right among the mob now, and it was breaking into groups, each eddying round one or more of the horsemen, who had as much as they could do to hold their own with whip and sabre. It was impossible to reload the rifles, and anyhow they would not have been much use at these close quarters. I saw more than one horse overborne, his rider dragged from the saddle and hideously done to death. The rabble were like mad wolves rather than human beings.
A fresh volley from the front,—more troops were coming up there,—yells of triumph from the rear, where the soldiers had been beaten back and a way of retreat opened up. The furious eddies merged into a solid mass once more, a terror stricken sauve qui peut before the reinforcements.
Impossible to make headway against this; and yet every instant I was being swept along, further from Anne. All I could do was to set my teeth and edge towards the sidewalk. I got to the wall at last, set my back to it, and let the rout pour by, the Cossacks in full chase now, felling every straggler they overtook, even slashing at the dead and wounded as they rode over them.
I started to run back, and the wild horsemen did not molest me. I still wore the uniform in which I had left Zostrov; it was in tatters after this frenzied half-hour, but it stood me in good stead once again, and prevented my being shot down.
There was Anne, still alive, thank God; she was kneeling beside the woman; and Natalya, also unhurt, stood by her, trying to raise her, and seemingly urging her to seek shelter.
I tried to shout, but my mouth was too dry, so I ran on, stumbling over the bodies that strewed the ground.
Some of the Cossacks had turned and were riding back; a group passed me as I neared Anne, and one of them swung his rifle up and fired. Natalya fell with a scream, and Anne sprang up.
“Shame, shame, you cowards, to shoot defenceless women!” she cried indignantly.
He spurred towards her, but I was first. I flung myself before her and fired at him. He reeled, swerved, and galloped on, but his companions were round us. I fired again, and yet again; something flashed above me; I felt a stunning blow on my forehead, staggered back, and fell.
The last thing I heard was a woman’s shriek.
It was the flat of the sabre that had got me on the forehead, otherwise there’d have been an end of me at once. I was not unconscious for very long, for when I sat up, wiped the blood out of my eyes, and stared about me, sick and dazed, unable for the moment to recollect what had happened, I could still hear a tumult raging in the distance.
The street itself was quiet; the soldiers, the mob were gone; all the houses were shut and silent, though scared faces were peeping from some of the upper windows. Here and there a wounded man or woman was staggering or crawling away; and close beside me a woman was sitting, like a statue of despair, with her back against the wall, and something lying prone across her knees—the little mangled body of the boy who had been killed in the first scuffle, that Marie Levinska had provoked.
I remembered all then, and looked round wildly for Anne. There was no sign either of her or of Natalya.
I scrambled up, impatiently binding my handkerchief tight round my wounded head, which was bleeding profusely now, and stood over the silent woman.
“Where are they? Where is the lady who was with you?” I demanded hoarsely. “Answer me, for God’s sake!”
“They took her away—those devils incarnate—and the other woman got up and ran after,” she answered dully. “There was an officer with them; he cried out that they would teach her not to insult the army.”
I felt my blood run cold. Since I returned to this accursed country I had seen many—and heard of more—deeds of such fiendish cruelty perpetrated on weak women, on innocent little children, that I knew what the Cossacks were capable of when their blood was up. They were, as the women said, devils incarnate at such times.
My strength came back to me, the strength of madness, and I rushed away, down that stricken street, with but one clear idea in my mind,—to die avenging Anne, for I knew no power on earth could save her.
As I ran the tumult waxed louder, coming, as I guessed, from the great square to which the street led at this end.
Half-way along, a woman, huddled in the roadway, clutched at me, with a moaning cry. I shook off her grasp, glanced at her, and saw she was Natalya. The faithful soul had not been able to follow her mistress far.
“Where have they taken her?” I cried.
She could not speak, but she glared at me, a world of anguish and horror in her dark eyes, and pointed in the direction I was going, and I hurried on. I had a “killer” in my hand, the deadly little bludgeon of lead, set on a spiral copper spring, that was the favorite weapon of the mob, though I haven’t the least notion as to when I picked it up.
Now I was on the fringe of the crowd that overflowed from the square, and was pushing my way forward towards the centre, a furious vortex of noise and confusion. A desperate fight was in progress, surging round something, some one.
“It is Anna Petrovna!” a woman screamed above the din. “They tore her clothes from her; they are beating her to death with their nagaikas! Mother of Mercy! That such things should be!”
“‘À la vie et à la mort.’ Save her; avenge her,” some one shouted, I myself I think, and the cry was taken up and echoed hoarsely on all sides. So, there must be many of the League in the turmoil.
Now I was in the thick of it, a swaying, struggling mass of men and horses; many of the horses plunging riderless as the wild horsemen were dragged from their saddles, and disappeared in that stormy sea of outraged humanity. The Cossacks were getting the worst of it, for once, not a doubt of that.
“Back,” roared a mighty voice. “We have her; back I say; make way there,—let us pass!”
Mishka’s voice, and Mishka’s burly figure, mounted on a horse, pressed forward slowly, forcing a way through for another horseman who followed close in his wake.
“Make way, comrades,” shouted Mishka again, and at the cry, at the sight of the grim silent horseman in the rear, a curious lull fell on all within sight and hearing; though elsewhere the strife raged furiously as ever.
Loris sat erect in his saddle, as if on parade; bareheaded, his face set like a white mask, his brilliant blue eyes fixed, expressionless, no, that’s not the right word, but I can’t say what the expression was; neither horror nor anguish, nor despair, just a quiet steady gaze, without a trace of human emotion in it. Save that he was breathing heavily and slowly, he might have been a statue,—or a corpse. I am sure he was quite unconscious of his surroundings. The reins lay loose on his horse’s neck, and, though its sides heaved, and its coat was a plaster of sweat and foam and blood, the good beast took its own way quietly through that densely packed, suddenly silent mob, as if it, like its master, was oblivious of the mad world around them.
But it was on the burden borne by the silent horseman that every eye was fixed; a burden partly hidden by a soldier’s great coat. I knew she was dead,—we all knew it,—though the head with its bright dishevelled hair, as it lay heavily on her lover’s shoulder, seemed to have a semblance of life, as it moved slightly with the rise and fall of his breast. Her face was hidden, but from under the coat one long arm swayed limp, its whiteness hideously marred with jagged purple weals, from which the blood still oozed, trickling down and dripping from the tips of the fingers,—those beautiful ringless fingers that I knew and loved so well.
I had no further thought of fighting now; my brain and heart were numb, so I just dropped my weapon and fell in behind the horse, following close on its heels. Others did the same, the whole section of the crowd on this side the square moving after us, in what, compared with the chaos of a few minutes back, was an orderly retreat.
Well it was for some of them that they did so, for we had scarcely gained the street when the rattling boom of artillery sounded in the rear; followed by a renewed babel of shrieks and yells. The guns had been brought up and the work of summarily clearing the square had begun. But before the panic-stricken mob overtook us, flying helter-skelter before the new terror, Loris had urged his horse forward, or it quickened its pace of its own accord as the throng in front thinned and gave way more easily. I think I tried instinctively to keep up with it, but the crowd closed round me, the rush of fugitives from the rear overtook, overwhelmed us, and I was carried along with it.
I suppose I must have kept my footing, otherwise I should have been trampled down, as were so many others on that awful day. But where I went and what I did during the hours that followed I don’t know, and I never shall. I lost all sense of time and place; though I’ve a hazy recollection of stumbling on alone, through dark streets, sodden with the rain that was now falling in a persistent, icy drizzle. Some of the streets were silent and deserted; in others I paused idly to watch parties of sullen soldiers and police, grumbling and swearing over their gruesome task of collecting the dead bodies, and tossing them into carts; and again I stared into brilliantly lighted cafés and listened to the boisterous merriment of those within. Were they celebrating an imaginary victory, or acting on the principle, “Let us eat, drink, and be merry, for to-morrow—perchance to-night—we die?”
Death brooded over the city that night; I felt His presence everywhere,—in the streets that were silent as the grave itself; in those whence the dead were being removed; most of all where men and women laughed and sang and defied Him! But I felt the dread Presence in a curious detached fashion. Death was my enemy indeed, an enemy who would not strike, who passed me by as one beneath contempt! And always, clear before my eyes, in my ears, above all other sights and sounds, I saw Anne’s face, heard her voice. Now she stood before me as I had first known her,—a radiant, queenly vision; a girl whose laughing eyes showed never a care in the world, or a thought beyond the passing moment. Her hands were full of flowers, red flowers, red as blood. Why, it was blood; it was staining her fingers, dripping from them! Yet the man didn’t see it; that man with the dark eager face, who was standing beside her, who took a spray of the flowers from her hand. What a fool this Cassavetti is not to know that she is “La Mort!”
Now she is changed; she wears a black gown, and the red flowers have vanished; but she is lovelier, more queenly than ever, as she looks at me with wide, pathetic eyes, and says, “I have deceived you!”
Again she stands, with hands outstretched, and cries, “The end is in sight; thank God for all His mercies;” and her face is as that of an angel in Heaven.
But always there is a barrier between her and me; a barrier impalpable yet unpassable. I try to surmount it, but I am beaten back every time. Now it is Cassavetti who confronts me; again, and yet again, it is Loris, with his stern white face, his inscrutable blue eyes. He is on horseback; he rides straight at me, and he bears something in his arms.
I struggled up and looked around me. I knew the place well enough, the long narrow room that had once been the salle à manger in the Vassilitzi’s Warsaw house, but that, ever since I had known it, had been the principal ward in the amateur hospital instituted by Anne. A squalid ward enough, for the beds were made up on the floor, anyhow, and every bit of space was filled, leaving just a narrow track for the attendants to pass up and down.
Along that track came a big figure that I recognized at once as Mishka, walking with clumsy caution.
“You are better? That is well,” he said in a gruff undertone.
“How did I get here?” I demanded.
“Yossof brought you; he found you walking about the streets, raving mad. It is a marvel that you were not shot down.”
Then I remembered something at least of what had passed.
“How long since?” I stammered, putting my hand up to my bandaged head.
“Two days.”
“And—?”
“I will answer no questions,” he growled in his surliest fashion. “I will send you food and you are to sleep again. He will see you later.”
“He—Loris; he is safe, then?”
He nodded, but would say no more, and presently I drifted back into sleep or unconsciousness.
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.
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!”