_ CHAPTER XI. FOR THE SAKE OF THE CZAR
When one is sentenced to death by the nihilists in Russia it sends a cold shiver down the back, no matter how brave and self-reliant one may be, for those fanatics have an uncomfortable way of carrying out such decrees to the bitter end. However, I smiled and assured the princess that I thought I could find a way to avoid the consequences of my eavesdropping, and then awaited the moment when she would say more. For a long time she was silent, and during it I studied her carefully, for she was the most complex puzzle that I had ever encountered in the shape of a woman. I had heard enough to know that she was not only a conspirator against the life of the emperor, but that she was ostensibly if not really, the leader among her fellow conspirators; or if not
the leader, then a leader. I had heard her talk glibly of assassination and death, and I had heard her deplore in mental anguish the part she was forced to play in the game of Russian politics. In one moment I had believed her to be a heartless schemer, a murderess, and one who was devoid of compassion; and in the next I was forced to the conjecture that she was a victim of circumstances, and that she had no love for or sympathy with the cause she advocated. Now, as I watched her, the same emotions succeeded each other in my judgment of her character, and finally I summed them all up in the decision that she was a being who was swayed by impulses. There are seeming paradoxes which will explain just what my conclusions were concerning Zara de Echeveria. She was deliberately impulsive; calculatingly reckless; systematically chaotic. The warm, Southern blood in her veins impelled her to deeds which were rendered thrice effective by reason of the fact that she applied to them the calculating coolness and method of her Russian ancestors. Hence the paradox.
Presently she raised her eyes to mine.
"Dubravnik," she said slowly, "there is one way of escape for you; and there is only one."
"What is that?" I asked.
"You must become a nihilist."
"I had thought of that," I returned coolly. For, indeed, I had thought of it, although not at all from the motive she understood me to mean.
"You had thought of it?" she cried. "Do you say that earnestly, or only to lead me on?"
"Was it not this very point that you were discussing with your brother when you entered the garden last night, princess?" I asked, recalling the mention of my name between them at that time.
"Yes; I had said to him that you were the kind of a man who should be added to our ranks. I think you must have heard his reply."
"Yes."
"Do you know what nihilism is, Mr. Dubravnik?"
"No. I have always regarded it as a dangerous organization; morally dangerous, I mean. You must not think that I have considered joining it for any other reason than to place myself in a position where I will feel that it is my duty to respect the confidence that I stole from you, rather than to betray it."
"Then you never had such a thought until you knew I was a nihilist?"
"Never."
"And you would join us for my sake?"
"No."
"For whose, then?"
"For the sake of the czar."
"Ah! You would join only to betray them all into the hands of the police! That is what you mean."
Zara leaped to her feet. Her whole manner underwent a change and for the instant she was completely dominated by a furious scorn which found its expression in every single pose of the attitude she assumed. Her eyes blazed with the sudden anger she felt at me, brought about more by the thought which came to her that I, whom she had stooped to admire, was nothing but a spy. A torrent of words rushed to her lips, at least her appearance was that she was on the point of denouncing me most bitterly; but I raised a hand and interrupted her, bending slightly forward, and speaking with sharp decision, although coolly, and with studied conciseness of expression.
"No," I said. "If I should become a nihilist, it would be to protect the emperor, not to betray your friends."
Again her entire manner underwent a change. As if she thoroughly believed me, the fury of scorn left her eyes, the angry glitter of them ceased, the rigidity of her attitude relaxed, and I saw that she was regarding me with an expression of wondering amazement, in which pity, and longing, not unmixed with admiration, were dominant. She was silent for the moment, but she kept her eyes fixed upon mine, and gradually they began to glow with that fire of enthusiasm which no argument can ever hope to overcome. Looking upon her I realized that if she were not a nihilist at heart, she had become one by reason of some great mental cataclysm through which she had passed. I believed then, and I was to know later, that I was correct, and that nothing at present apparent could swerve her from her set purpose, or could influence her against the cause she had undertaken, and was now upholding, so valiantly. The spasms of remorse that rushed upon her at times, and such feelings of repugnance as I had heard her express in the garden, were only
oases in the desert of her perverted judgment, engendered in her very soul by some terrible calamity through which she had personally passed, or regarding which she had been a close observer. When she spoke again, it was with low-toned softness, and she glided a step or two nearer to me, raising her beautiful eyes, now softened to an appealing quality, and clasping her hands in front of her with a gesture of suppliant helplessness that was almost overwhelming.
"Do you think that we have no wrongs to right?" she demanded.
"I think you have many, princess, judging from your standpoint; but you cannot right them by committing greater ones. Nothing can dignify or ennoble deliberate assassination, or wanton, cruel, secret murder. The nihilists are assassins, murderers, cutthroats."
"You do not know! You do not know!"
"Perhaps not."
"Having heard what you did--knowing, as you do, my secret--unwilling as I know you are, to betray me, what do you propose, Mr. Dubravnik?"
I replied deliberately.
"I have thought of joining the nihilists, but I have reconsidered the question as impracticable. Therefore, I have decided that you must leave Russia."
"I? Leave Russia? Ordered away by you?"
"Yes, princess."
She laughed wildly, and again this creature of impulse underwent one of her lightning changes of which I had seen so many evidences. She was indignant now, made so by offended pride, because of the affront my words had put upon her social status. She, a princess, high in place, to be ordered out of her own country by a man who was a stranger to her, was unprecedented.
"Do you think that I am a weak thing to be ordered about like that by a man whom I never met until last night? Beware, sir, lest you make me regret that the bullet did not do its work more effectively. I am a princess; I have wealth, power, influential friends; do not think that the czar would believe what you would say, when he heard the story that I could tell him."
I shrugged my shoulders carelessly. It was part of my purpose to anger her even to the point of madness, for in that way alone could I hope to draw her out to the point of revealing herself to me truly. And besides, I was again falling under that fascination which exerted such strange and compelling power over me.
"If I believed you to be sincere in what you say now, it would make my unfortunate duty much more simple," I said.
"Your duty! What is your duty? To betray a woman?"
"Precisely that."
"And you would do that?
You? "
"If the alternative fails, yes."
Again she rose from the couch upon which she had relaxed. She came and stood quite near to me, and with infinite scorn, impossible to describe, she said slowly:
"I think our interview is at an end, Mr. Dubravnik, for there is evidently nothing to be gained by it. I much prefer to choose my friends among those whom you call assassins, than from frequenters of the palace--if the others are like you."
I rose also, and bowed coldly.
"As you will, princess," I said. "I promised to keep your secret twenty-four hours. You have still ten hours in which to do one of three things to obviate the necessity that is now upon me, of betraying you."
"Indeed!" haughtily.
"The easiest one will be for you to notify me of your intention to depart from the country. The second, quite as effective, was suggested by yourself last night when we talked of suicide. The third will perhaps prove more congenial than either of the others; you can have me murdered." I bowed, and started towards the door, but she barred the way before I could reach it.
"You shall not go!" she cried, extending her arms as if to bar the way against my exit, and again her speaking countenance betrayed the impulse within her. This time it was terror.
"No? Is your brother Ivan here to complete the work so badly begun, princess?" I purposely rendered my question insolently offensive.
For a moment she gazed at me in horror; then, with a sob in her throat, she stepped aside and pointed towards the door.
"Go," she said. "I should not have detained you." But as I was about to take her at her word she burst into a passion of tears. At the same instant she leaped towards me, and seizing me with both hands, drew me back again to the middle of the floor.
"No--no--no--no!" she cried. "You shall not go! Don't you know that you would be shot down at the door of my house, or at best before you had gone a hundred feet away from it? Have you forgotten that your appointment with me to-day was known by those who have decided upon your death? Will you force me to acquiesce in your murder, even though you believe me capable of committing it?"
I knew that what she said was undoubtedly true, for I had neglected my usual caution in not providing for an emergency of this kind; but I pretended to be incredulous.
"Yet I cannot remain here indefinitely, princess," I said.
"It is the only way to save your life. If you leave here before I have seen those who would kill you, you will not live fifteen minutes after my door closes behind you. Oh, I beseech you, take the oath; promise me that you will take the oath, and let me go and tell my friends that you will do so."
She was pleading with me now, with her hands supplicatingly extended, and with an expression of such utter terror in her face because of the calamity which threatened me, that my soul was for a moment moved to pity for this woman, who could pass through so many phases of emotion in so short a period of time. But nevertheless it was not my purpose to betray that pity, then. I had still to draw her out, more and more; there was still much to learn of this complex woman, so beautiful and so noble, who yet could find a sufficient excuse to engage in such nefarious practices.
I have thought since that I was playing with myself, as well as with her, at that time; that I was making a study of Zara's soul, rather than of her character; I have believed, and I now believe, that even at that moment I was madly in love with this half wild creature, outwardly so tamed, and yet inwardly more than half a barbarian, with the blood of her Tartar ancestors on the one side coursing hotly in her veins. I wanted to know her. I wanted to bring her out of herself. My own intuition recognized, and was making the most of a boundless and limitless sympathy that existed between us two, although I was not at the time conscious of the fact; a sympathy that found voice in Zara's heart as well as in mine, and which needed but a touch, as of the spark to grains of powder, to fire it into a blaze of love so absolute as to sweep every other consideration from its path. My heart recognized hers, and I was subconsciously aware that hers recognized mine. It may be that I was playing two parts with her at that moment, the one being that of my ostensible character, as an agent of the czar; the other asserting itself as plain Dan Derrington, an American gentleman who was very much in love.
"Do you suppose, even then, that they would believe you, and spare me?" I asked, with unconcealed irony, forcing myself even against my will, to render my question bitterly offensive.
"Yes, oh, yes! I would give myself as hostage for your honor. My life would be forfeited, too, if you should not keep the oath."
I hesitated. The opportunity was an alluring one in a way, for it would render the entire organization like an open book to me. But more than all else was the communion of interest that would thus be created between this peerless woman and me. Still, there were other things to be considered. The danger I would thus incur might render impotent the entire fabric that I had constructed with so much care; and truth to tell I could not bring myself to the point of utilizing a woman's confidence in order ultimately to betray her and her friends.
"I cannot take the oath, princess," I said, calmly.
"Think! think!" she exclaimed.
"I have thought. I cannot do it."
"Sit down again, Mr. Dubravnik. There is no danger as long as you remain here. I wish to tell you something. I want you to know why I am a nihilist; then, perhaps, you may be of a different opinion."
I obeyed her and she resumed her position on the couch, but her entire manner had undergone another change. The contempt, the scorn, the anger had all died out of her face which now assumed a retrospective expression and when she next addressed me her eyes had in them a dreamy, far away light, as though she were living in the past while she recited the strange tale that thrilled me as nothing else ever had, or ever has done.
"I have heard," she began, "that you yourself have seen some of the horrors of Siberia, but I doubt it. I do not even believe that you are a Russian, and to be perfectly frank I do not believe that your name is Dubravnik. I am of the opinion--and I did not think of it until since the commencement of this interview--that you are not what you seem to be, and that your mission in Russia is in some way connected with the Government police; that you are more than a passive enemy of nihilism--that you are, in short, an active one. If I am right there exists all the more reason why I must appeal to your manhood, your honor, your sense of justice, to your bravery and chivalry. Who are you, Mr. Dubravnik?"
"I am Daniel Derrington, an American, in the service of the czar."
"And therefore connected with the police."
"No. The police do not know me, save as you know me; not even the terrible Third Section."
She scarcely noticed my confession, so absorbed was she by the mere thought of the story she was about to relate.
Her eyes were turned towards the window, her hands clasped tightly together in her lap, her chin was raised, and she seemed to be looking into the past as one might look upon a picture hanging against the wall, observing every detail of it minutely, and yet conscious only of the whole.
"Fancy yourself, a Russian of noble birth, an officer in the army, a favorite at court, the possessor of almost unlimited wealth and happy beyond the dreams of heaven," she said, dreamily. "Search your memory for the picture of a beautiful girl--she was only a girl, not yet twenty, when my story begins--and make this one of whom I speak thrice more beautiful than the picture you delineate. She was your sister. She
is your sister. You are her brother in the story I shall relate to you. You two are fatherless and motherless; you are all that is left of your family, once famous, and seemingly destined through you to become so again. You are a favorite with the czar, and your sister is the pet of the royal family. Your influence at court is unlimited. You are on the summit of the wave of favor and popularity. Have you drawn the picture?"
"I endeavor to do so, princess."
"You and Yvonne--she had a French name--reside in the same palace where your fathers lived before you. Your sister is the idol of your heart. You worship her with such devotion that it becomes a maxim quoted by mothers to their sons. You idealize her, and are proud of her; and she is worthy of it all. Ah, sir, follow me with care, for the story will touch you, I believe, as nothing else could do."
Zara left the couch and crossed to the window, where she stood staring through it for a long period of time, so silent, so still, so like a statue in her attitude, that I beheld her with something like awe, while I trembled with eagerness for her to speak again. I must admit that the story she had begun to relate had thus far made no impression upon me, and that it was only the voice of the woman I loved, and the changing expressions of its tone, and her beautiful countenance, which attracted me then. She was so wholly lovable in every attribute of her being; and now, absorbed as she was by the retrospective consideration of the tale she had begun to relate, and because her manner was entirely impersonal, she became even more compelling in her fascinations for me. I forgot, for the moment, that she was a Russian princess and a nihilist, and remembered only the one absorbing fact that she was a woman. My duties in St. Petersburg and the character I had assumed in fulfilling them, the city itself and all my surroundings, the environment of the moment and all that went with it, faded from my mental view, and left us two there, utterly alone in a world of our own, self created by my own conceit of the moment.
I do not know what impulse it was that brought me to my feet with a sudden start of resolve, but I had taken three or four strides toward her, with arms outstretched to seize her lithe form in my embrace, and to crush her against me in a burst of passion which I found myself no longer able to control, when I was startled into motionlessness and silence by a sudden cry from Zara, who turned about and faced me for an instant, and who then seized me by the arm and drew me to the window, pointing into the street as she did so. _