Kitobni o'qish: «The Prophet's Mantle»

PROLOGUE

TO be the son of a noble of high position, to be the heir to vast estates in a western province, and to a palace in the capital, to have large sums safely invested in foreign banks, to be surrounded by every luxury that to most men makes life worth living, to be carefully inoculated with all the most cherished beliefs of the territorial aristocracy, and as carefully guarded from all liberal influences; to be all this does not generally lead a man to be a social reformer as well. Such causes, as a rule, do not produce a very revolutionary effect. But in Russia, tyranny, officialism, and the supreme sway of ignorance and brutality, seem to have reversed all ordinary rules, and upset all ordinary calculations. There the 'gentlemen of the pavement' are nobles, with a longer lineage than the Romanoffs, and progressive views find some of their most doughty champions in the ranks of the old nobility. So Count Michael Litvinoff was not such a startling phenomenon, nor such a glaring anomaly, as he would have been in any other country. His parents died when he was about eighteen, and after their death he spent most of his time in close study of physics, philosophy, and of the 'dismal science,' as expounded by its most advanced apostles. He wrote, too, extensively, though most of his works were published in countries where the censorship was not quite so strict as in his own. When he was about twenty-five, and was deep in the heart of his great work, 'The Social Enigma,' he woke up one morning with a conviction that all his last chapters were utter nonsense, and, what was worse, he couldn't for the life of him make out what they meant even when he read them over. Bewildered and anxious, he hastened to refer the matter to a personal friend and political ally, whose answer was brief and to the point.

'Nonsense? Why, the book's as clear as daylight, and as convincing as Euclid. You've been working too hard—overdoing it altogether. Go to the South of France for a month, and lose a few roubles at Monte Carlo. It will do you good.'

Michael Litvinoff took the first part of this advice; and though he did not take the second part, he did sometimes spend an hour in watching others lose their money.

One night he noticed a young man on whom fortune appeared to be frowning with more than her usual persistence and bitterness. Again and again he staked, and again and again he lost. At last he collected the few coins that remained of the good-sized heap with which he had begun, and staked them all. He lost again. He got up and walked out. Struck by the wild look in his eyes, Litvinoff followed him into the gardens of the Casino. At the end of a dark alley he stopped, pulled something from his breast, which might have been a cigar-case, opened it, and took out something which Litvinoff saw was not a cigar. The Count sprang forward, and knocked the other's hand up just in time to send a tiny bullet whizzing through the orange trees.

'Damn you!' cried the other, in English, turning furiously on Litvinoff. 'What the devil do you mean?'

'Come to my rooms,' said the Count simply; and the other, after a moment's hesitation and a glance of sullen defiance, actually obeyed, and in silence the two walked side by side out of the gardens.

When the door of his sitting-room was closed upon them, Count Litvinoff waved his new acquaintance to an easy-chair, and, taking one himself, remarked,—

'You're a nice sort of sportsman, aren't you? Suppose you have some tea and a cigar.'

'The cigar with pleasure; but tea is not much in my line.'

'Ah, I forgot; you English don't worship tea as we Russians do. By-the-way, as there's no one else to perform the ceremony, I may as well introduce myself. My name is Michael Litvinoff.'

The other looked up.

'Let me withdraw my refusal of your offer just now. I must confess that it would be pleasant to me to drink tea, or anything else in reason, in the company of the man who has written "Hopes and Fears for Liberty."'

The tea was made, and before the cigar was finished Litvinoff had learned not only that his new friend was a political sympathiser, but also the main facts in the young man's personal history.

His name was Armand Percival; his father English, his mother French. He had been brought up in Paris, and had been left an orphan with a small but sufficient property, which, with an energy and application worthy of a better cause, he had managed to scatter to the winds before a year was over. It was the last remnant of this little possession that he had brought to Monte Carlo in the desperate hope of retrieving his fallen fortunes, and with the fixed determination of accepting the ruling of fate and of ending his life, should that hope be unfulfilled.

'And really,' he ended, 'you would have done better to have been judiciously blind in the gardens just now, and have let the farce be played out. As it is, affairs are just as desperate as they were an hour ago, and I, perhaps thanks to your good tea, am not so desperate. When I leave you I must go and grovel under the orange trees till I find that pistol, for I haven't even the money to buy another.'

'It won't do to let the world lose a friend of liberty in this fashion. They are scarce enough. We can talk this over to-morrow. Stay here to-night. We'll hunt for your little toy by daylight if you like.'

They did find the pistol the next day. By that time they had had a good deal of talk together, and Armand Percival had become the private secretary of Count Michael Litvinoff.

Life on the ancestral estate of the Litvinoffs was utterly different from anything Percival had ever known before, but he had conceived an unbounded admiration and affection for his friend and employer, and he threw himself into his new duties with an ardour which made boredom simply impossible, and with a perseverance almost equalling that which he had displayed in the dissipation of his little fortune.

He helped Litvinoff in all his literary work, and was soon admitted to his fullest confidence. His new life was wrapped in an atmosphere of romance, and it contained a spice of danger which was perfectly congenial to his nature. The most commonplace action ceases to be commonplace when one knows that one risks one's life in doing it. He soon made rapid progress in the Russian language—Swinburne was given up for Pouchkine, Tchernychewsky displaced Victor Hugo, and Percival revelled in the trenchant muscular style of Bakounin as he had once delighted in the voluptuous sweetness of Théophile Gautier. He had always had a leaning towards Democracy, and a fitful kind of enthusiasm for popular liberty. The strong personal influence, the much bigger enthusiasm, and the intense reality of Michael Litvinoff's convictions served to swell what had been a little stream into a flood with a tolerably strong current.

Both men worked hard, and at the end of some twenty months 'The Social Enigma' was published in London and Paris. In this, Litvinoff's great work, he managed to keep just on the right side of the hedge, but he indemnified himself for this self-denial by writing a little pamphlet, called 'A Prophetic Vision,' which was published by the Revolutionary Secret Press, and circulated among the peasants, for whom it was specially written; and all those concerned in its publication flattered themselves that this time, at any rate, the chief of the secret police and his creatures, in spite of their having obtained a copy twenty-four hours after it was printed, were thoroughly off the track.

One night in winter the secretary sat at his old-fashioned desk in the oak-panelled room in the east wing of the mansion. Big logs glowed on the immense open hearth, in front of which a great hound stretched its lazy length. The secretary was correcting manuscripts in a somewhat desultory way, and varying the monotony of the penwork with frequent puffs of cigarette smoke. Some wine stood at his elbow.

Count Litvinoff had been away ten days, and would be away as long again. He had gone to a meeting of friends of the cause at Odessa, and Percival felt the strength of his enthusiasm beginning to give way before the appalling deadly dulness of his perfectly solitary life. There was not a creature to speak to within miles except the servants, and Russian servants, as a class, are not much of a resource against ennui.

He flung down his pen at last, leaned back in his chair, and poured himself out some more wine. He held it up to the light to admire its ruby colour, and then tasted it appreciatively.

'H'm! not bad. About the best thing in the place now its master's away. Heigho!—heigho! this is very slow, which, by-the-way, is rhyme.'

He spoke the words aloud, and the hound on the bearskin by the fire rose, stretched itself, and came slowly to lay its great head on his knee.

'Well, old girl, I daresay you'd like a little hunting for a change. Upon my soul it's almost a pity we're so very clever in keeping our literary achievements dark. We should have something exciting then at anyrate, and I'd give anything for a little excitement.'

'You're likely to have as much as you care about, then,' said another voice, which made Percival leap to his feet as the purple curtains that hung across the arched entrance to the sleeping-room were flung back, and a tall figure, muffled in furs, strode forward. The dog sprang at it.

'Down, Olga! Quiet, quiet, old lady!'

The coat was thrown off, and fell with a flop to the ground; and Litvinoff held out his hand to his secretary, who had started back and caught up the manuscripts, and was holding them behind him.

'Good heavens!' said Percival. 'Litvinoff, what is it? Are they after you? How did you come in?'

'I came in the way we must go out before another half-hour. They've found out the distinguished author of the "Vision," and they're anxious to secure the wonder. Lock that door; we don't want the servants.'

'It is locked. I don't do work of this sort with unlocked doors.'

Litvinoff glanced at the manuscript on the oak writing-table.

'We must collect all this and burn it, though I don't think we could be deeper damned than we are, even if we left it alone.'

'But where have you come from?' asked Percival, laying his hand on the other's shoulder. 'You're wet through. Have a drink,' and he poured out a tumbler of the Burgundy.

Litvinoff took it, and as he set down the glass replied, 'I fell into some water. There was snow enough to hide the ice.'

'Well, then, the very first thing is to change your clothes. Shall I get you dry ones, or will you go?'

'No, no; neither of us must leave this room. There may be a traitor in the house for aught I know. No one saw me come in. I shall do well enough.'

'You may as well be executed at once as be frozen to death in the course of the night. You must make shift with some of my things. You change while I see to the papers. We can talk while you're changing.'

Each went deftly and swiftly about what he had to do, and neither seemed to be in the least thrown off his balance. There was much less fuss than there is in some families every morning when the 'City man' is hurrying to catch his train. Drawer after drawer was emptied out on the wide hearthstones, and as stern denunciations of tyranny and eloquent appeals to the spirit of freedom vanished in smoke and sparks up the great chimney, Percival, a little puffed by his exertions, asked, 'How soon must we go? What's the exact state of things?'

'Our friends at Odessa were warned. There's an order for my arrest. I was to have been taken at Odessa, and long before this they'll have found out that I'm not there, and will have started after me here.'

'But how are we to go? Are we to walk, and fall into a succession of pools? Can't we get some horses from the stable?'

'I have a sleigh not a quarter of a mile off. Zabrousky is with it, waiting. We can reach Kilsen to-night, and get horses for the frontier. There is a revolver in the desk. The one in my belt is full of water. I've got two passports that will carry us over. You are Monsieur Mericourt of Paris, and I am Herr Baum of Düsseldorf, friends travelling.'

It was lucky that this room, the ordinary work-room of the friends, contained all their secrets and most of their 'portable property.'

'How about money?' asked the secretary.

'There are three hundred Napoleons in the cash-box. Those will be best to take. By-the-way, stick a French novel into your portmanteau, and throw in anything you can to fill it up. We have the frontier to pass. You know I am all right at Paris or Vienna.'

'Oh, yes,' rejoined Percival. 'If we get there we're all right. But these clothes of yours; we must hide them, or they'll tell tales.'

'Oh, bring them with you, and leave the room in order.'

'Yes, and I must take a revolver myself. We'll give a good account of a few of those brutes if they come too close.'

'Are we ready? I'll take the portmanteau, you carry those clothes. Now then, lights out. Give me your hand.'

The candles were blown out, and Litvinoff led the way through the bedroom and through a tiny door in the panelled wall, of whose existence Percival had been up to this moment ignorant. They passed down a narrow staircase, in a niche of whose wall they left the wet garments, and, passing through a stone passage or two, suddenly came out into the ice-cold air at an angle of the house quite other than that at which Percival had expected to find himself.

Litvinoff shivered. 'I miss my cloak,' he said. 'However, there are plenty of skins in the sleigh.'

The snow fell lightly on them as they hurried quietly away; it did its best with its cold feathery veil to hide the footsteps of the fugitives.

'Is this exciting enough for you?' asked the Count as they strode along under cover of the trees.

'Quite, thanks—I think I should be able to submit to a little less excitement with equanimity. It won't be actually unpleasant to be out of the dominions of his sacred majesty.'

'This excitement is nothing to what we shall have in getting over the frontier,' said Litvinoff; 'that's where the tug of war will come. Percival,' he went on after a pause, 'I shall never forgive myself if you suffer in this business through me.'

'My dear fellow,' Percival answered cheerfully, 'if it had not been for you I should have been out of it all long ago, and if the worst comes to the worst, there's still a way out of it. As long as I have my trusty little friend here,' tapping the revolver in his breast pocket, 'I don't intend to see the inside of St Peter and St Paul.'

As he spoke they heard the sound of horses' restless hoofs.

'What's that?'

'All right!' returned Litvinoff. 'They're our horses.'

Behind a clump of fir trees the sleigh was waiting, and beside it a man on a horse.

The two friends entered the sleigh, and adjusted the furs about them, and Litvinoff took the reins.

'Good speed,' said Zabrousky; 'a safe journey, and a good deliverance.'

'Good-bye,' Litvinoff said. 'Don't stay here a moment. It may cost you your life.'

In another instant the horseman had turned and left them, and the jingling of the harness and the noise of the fleet hoofs were the only sounds that broke the dense night silence as the sleigh sped forward.

'Have you any idea what the time is?' said Litvinoff, when they had travelled smoothly over three or four miles of snow. 'It's too cold to get watches out, and too dark to see them if we did.'

'It must be past two,' said Percival. 'It must have been past midnight when you came in. I wonder what time those devils will reach the empty nest.'

'The later the better for us, and the servants will mix things a bit by telling them that I've not been home. At this rate we shall reach Eckovitch's place about four. We can stretch our legs there while he rubs the horses down a bit.'

'Will that be safe? Is he to be trusted?'

'My dear Percival, this line of retreat has been marked out a long time. Eckovitch has been ready for me any time these three years.'

Nothing more was said. The situation was too grave for mere chatter, and there was nothing of importance that needed saying just then. Percival leaned back among the furs, which were by this time covered with snow, and Litvinoff seemed to be concentrating all his attention on his driving, using the horses as gently as possible, and continually leaning forward and peering into the darkness to make out the track, which was becoming no easy task, as the steady falling snow was fast obliterating the landmarks.

The secretary, overcome by that drowsiness which results from swift movement through bitterly cold air, was almost asleep, when the horses slackened speed, and the change in the motion roused him.

'What's up? What's wrong?' he asked.

'All right. Here's Eckovitch!' and as he spoke the sleigh drew up in front of a long, low wooden building. He handed the reins to Percival, sprang to the ground, and battered at the door. After a short pause a light could be seen within, and a voice asked,—

'Who's there?'

The Count answered with one word which had a Russian sound, but which Percival had never heard before.

The door was opened at once, and after a few low-spoken words between Litvinoff and someone within, a man came out and took the reins, and Percival left the sleigh and followed his friend into the house.

A woman was already busy in fanning into new life the red ashes that had been covered over on the hearth. She flung on some chips and fir cones, and soon the crackling wood blazed up and showed the homely but not uncomfortable interior. As the two travellers shook the snow off their furs, Percival asked in English who this man was.

'A friend,' Litvinoff answered. 'He's supposed to be an innkeeper, but there aren't many travellers on this road. We make up deficiencies in his income.'

They drew seats up to the fire, and the woman brought them some glasses and a flask of vodka.

'You shall have some tea in a minute.'

'I hate this liquid fire,' said Percival, 'and I like tea better than I did at Monte Carlo. I'll wait for that.'

'Drink this, and don't be too particular. It'll help to keep us going, and we'll take the fag end of the flask with us,' Litvinoff answered.

When the tea was ready, and some sausage and bread were set before the strangers, the woman sat down on the other side of the hearth and looked at them as they ate, which they did with fairly good appetites.

Presently a low wailing cry arose from the further corner of the room, and the woman went and took up a funny old-fashioned looking little baby, and, returning to her seat by the fire, sat hushing it with low whispers of endearment. It was a strangely peaceful little scene, between two acts of a sufficiently exciting drama, which, for aught any of the actors knew, might end as a tragedy.

The spell of silence which had been over them in the sleigh was broken now, and they chatted lightly over their hasty meal. The Count's demeanour in the face of danger was a thing after Percival's own heart, and he had never admired his friend so much as he did, when, the meal being over, Litvinoff leaned back nonchalantly, stroking his long fair moustache and stirring his final cup of tea.

The secretary's own calmness was really more remarkable, however, since he was in the position of a young soldier under fire for the first time, whereas Litvinoff had known for eight years that at any moment he might be arrested, or might have to fly.

'Your horses will do to get to Kilsen now,' said the man, opening the door; 'you were wise to give them this rest. They'd not have done without it.'

'Poor brutes,' said the Count, 'I wish we could give them longer, but every minute's of consequence.'

'You'll cross the frontier at Ergratz, I suppose,' said the innkeeper, as they came out into the air. The weather had changed in the little time they had been in shelter. The snow was no longer falling; through a break in the clouds one or two stars twinkled frostily, and the wind was blowing the snow off the road in drifts.

As the sleigh glided away the man re-entered his house and bolted the door, and in five minutes the fire was raked together and covered over, the light was extinguished, and no sign left to show that wayfarers had been entertained there that night.

'We'll take the horses easily a bit now,' said Litvinoff; 'there'll be some stiffish hills by-and-by.'

They seemed to have been on the road for about six nights instead of one, when, nearly half way up one of these same stiffish hills, Percival laid his hand on Litvinoff's shoulder. 'Stop a moment,' he said, 'I heard hoofs behind.'

They stopped, listened, and heard nothing.

'It must have been the echo of our own hoofs among these hills. If they are near enough to be heard, it's all up with us. They're sure to be well mounted. However, we'll do our best to get on to Kilsen, and get mounted ourselves before morning.'

But morning was beginning to break, and with it came fresh snow.

At the foot of the next hill the secretary spoke again.

'Litvinoff, I'm certain I hear hoofs, and a good many of them.'

'So do I. We'll whip on—they can't hear us, the wind blows from them. We'll try another chance presently. I don't think we can win by speed.' He urged on the tired horses with voice and whip, and the weary animals put forth their strength in a wilder gallop. They were now rushing very swiftly through the icy air, and every moment increased the pace.

They had to slacken a little in going up the last and highest hill, near the crown of which they turned back their heads, and saw that what they had been flying from all night was close upon them now.

Over the brow of a lower hill immediately behind them came a band of horsemen, about a dozen strong as it seemed in the pale grey of the dawn.

'We must leave the sleigh,' said Litvinoff. 'Almost in a line across country to the left, not more than two versts off, is the house of Teliaboff; there we are safe for a day or two, if we can get there unseen. It's a desperate chance, but we must try it. Prop up the portmanteau and the furs to look like our figures. We'll tie the reins here, and get out just over the brow. They'll see us as we go over. Those Cossacks have eyes like eagles. We'll lash the horses on, and they'll go some distance without us; and when those devils find we're not in the sleigh they won't know exactly where to begin to search for us. Thank God, it's snowing harder and harder. That will help to hide our traces; and over this broken ground to the left our legs will serve us better than their horses will them.'

'There's barely a chance,' said the secretary. 'Let's stay and fight it out.'

'We'll fight if the worst comes to the worst; but as it is we've a very fair chance of escape. We have our revolvers.'

As they crossed the brow of the hill a wild shout borne by the wind told them that the Count had been right. They had been seen.

Litvinoff stopped the horses, and the two men got out, leaving the counterfeit presentment of themselves, which the secretary's deft hands had invested with a very real appearance.

The Count gave two tremendous lashes, the horses sprang madly forward at three times the pace they had made hitherto, and the two fugitives plunged through the snow to the left of the road.

'Don't go too fast,' whispered Litvinoff; 'you'll need all your wind presently. We've a fair start now, and they can't follow on horseback.'

They had not gone two hundred yards before they heard the troop sweep by.

'We weren't a minute too soon,' the secretary said.

'There goes another of them,' said the Count, as again they caught the sound of a horse's snow-muffled hoofs.

On they went, struggling over rough ground, sometimes waist-deep in snowdrifts, sometimes tripping over concealed stones or broken wood.

'We shall do it now,' said Litvinoff.

'They're on us, by God!' cried the secretary at the same instant.

They turned; they had been tracked, but only by one man. One of the pursuers, who had been a little behind the others, either better trained in this sort of sport than his fellows, or guided by some sixth sense, seemed to have divined what they had done, and had dismounted just at the right place, and followed them on foot.

He gave a yell of triumph as he saw a grey figure struggling up the incline before him.

'Aha, Mr Secretary,' he cried, and, raising his carbine, fired; the grey figure stumbled forward into the snow. 'You're done for, at any rate!'

The Cossack's triumph was a short one. As he dashed forward to secure his fallen quarry, another figure sprang from the snowy brushwood a little ahead of him, walked calmly towards him, raised a revolver, and shot him through the heart.

A week or two later one of those short and inaccurate paragraphs which date from St Petersburg appeared in several European papers. It was to the effect that Count Michael Litvinoff had been captured, after a desperate struggle, near the frontier, and that his private secretary, a young Englishman, had been shot in the fray.

But the French papers knew better, and that report was promptly contradicted.

The Débats, while confirming the news of the secretary's death, asserted that Count Michael Litvinoff was at that moment at the Hôtel du Louvre, and his bankers would have confirmed the statement.

And in the rooms of the Count at the Hôtel du Louvre a haggard, weary-faced man, almost worn out by the desperate excitement and the horrors of the last few weeks, was pacing up and down, unable to get away from the picture, that was ever before his eyes, of his friend's dead face, bloodstained and upturned from the snow, in the cold, grey morning light; unable to escape from that triumphant shout, 'Aha, Mr Secretary, you're done for, at any rate,' which seemed as if it would ring for ever in his ears.

'I would give ten years of my life to undo that night's work. I shall never meet another man quite like him. I wish the brute had shot me,' he said to himself over and over again.