I stood before her, not with bowed head, as perhaps I might have done had my true feelings been expressed, but with bowed and stricken heart, suddenly aware that I had gained the glory of her love only to lose it, and in a manner which carried with it no redress.
"I have completed an organization of men, Zara," I went on, calmly, and in a tone which I endeavored to render as monotonous as possible, "that has for its purpose the undoing of nihilism, as it is now practiced.
That body of men extends, in its ramifications, throughout St.
Petersburg, and even to other cities of Russia. Its purpose, primarily, is not to send conspirators to Siberia to suffer exile there, with all the other horrors that go with it, but to----"
"Enough!" she interrupted me. "I have heard quite enough, Dubravnik!
What you say to me now, is meaningless twaddle. You are like all the others who pit themselves against the silent body of men and women who are engaged in seeking the freedom of their country. If you knew anything of the horrors of Siberia, to which you so glibly refer, you would shudder when you mention them, and you would fly with horror from any act of your own that might commit a person to Siberia, and exile."
She came half-way around the table, and stood facing me, somewhat nearer. "If you had taken a journey through Siberia before you offered your services to the czar, you would have strangled yourself, or have cut out your tongue, rather than have gone to him with any such dastardly proposition as you confess yourself to have fathered. _You_ prate of stultifying yourself by taking the oath of nihilism, and repudiating your word to Alexander. YOU! YOU! A PROFESSIONAL SPY!" She threw back her head and laughed aloud, not with glee, but with utter derision of spirit, and I shrank from the sound of it as I might have done from a blow in the face.
Again she was a creature of moods and impulses. Again the wild Tartar blood, leaping in her veins, controlled her. With a sudden move she came nearer to me, and bending forward, looked into my face intently, as if searching for something which had hitherto escaped her notice.
"What are you doing, Zara?" I asked her; and she replied.
"I am searching for the man whom, but a moment ago, I thought I loved.
I am seeking to find what it could have been that I saw in your eyes, or your face, or your manner, that has so "_stultified_" ME. It is an apt word, Dubravnik."
"Seek further, and perhaps you will find."
"No," she said. "He is gone, if he ever was there;" and she shrank slowly away from me, backward, across the room, until the table was again between us, and she stood leaning upon it with both hands this time, peering at me with widened eyes that might have belonged to a child in the act of staring between the bars of a cage at some wild beast confined within it.
It is impossible to describe her att.i.tude and the expression of her face, at that moment. Horror, repulsion, contempt, loathing, even hatred, were depicted there. I recognized the fact with shuddering despair. I was that one thing which she most despised.
It is strange how the light of the world went out, for me. In realizing the great calamity that had fallen upon me, I forgot all else; but strangely enough I did not once think of appealing to her. Slowly I turned away, and with slow strides approached the door which would admit me to the corridor, and so permit me to pa.s.s from the house to the street.
I reached it; I drew it open. I did not turn my head to look at her again, lest I should become unmanned, and degrade myself by pleading with her for the impossible. I pa.s.sed into the hallway and pulled the door shut behind me, and then, somehow, I got as far as the bal.u.s.trade, which, by following it, would lead me to the bottom of the stairs at the house entrance.
My foot was upon the first step of the stairs when I heard rushing footsteps behind me, and instantly was caught by clinging arms around my neck, and I felt her hot and quick breath upon my cheek.
She did not speak; she only clung to me. I did not speak; but I turned about with restored strength, and with my spirit renewed. I seized her in my arms. I crushed her against me, violently. I raised her from her feet, holding her as if she had been a child, and then, bearing her with me, I strode backward through the doorway, and into the room I had just left. I carried her to the divan, and I seated her upon the edge of it, still retaining my grasp upon her; and I said:
"Zara, you are mine. Nothing short of death shall take you from me. In the last few moments I have experienced all the horrors of a separation from you. A little while ago you loved me. Only a few moments ago, we were all there was in creation. For a moment which has seemed an eternity, I believed that I had lost you, but when you followed me to the landing of the stairway, I knew that I had not lost you, even for that instant. You love me, Zara, and you shall be mine. Before G.o.d, you shall be!"
For a moment I thought she intended to struggle again, to escape me.
Indeed, I was certain that she was on the point of doing so, and I tightened my grasp upon her while I dropped upon one knee, and added:
"Zara, let me hear you say once again that you love me."
Her answer was a burst of tears, and for a time she could find no other expression for her emotions; and while these lasted, she clung to me the more tightly, so that when, at last, the storm did come to an end, her lips were closely against my ear, and I heard the whispered words:
"I do love you."
But instantly she started away from me, and she cried out.
"Wait! wait, Dubravnik! I remember, now, that I had begun to tell you a story. I was telling you what made me a nihilist."
"Yes."
"I will finish the story, if you will let me."
"Finish it," I said; "but do so while my arm is around you, and with your head resting against my shoulder. Let me hold you here, where you are, so that I may know I will not lose you again. You are a creature of such changing impulses. That half-wild nature of yours is sometimes so violent in its conclusions. Tell me the story, Zara. I will listen to it."
CHAPTER XV
THE MURDER OF A SOUL
Zara did as I requested. She seated herself upon the divan, and I sat beside her, with my arm around her. She rested her head against my shoulder, and in a low and dreamy tone she began, as if there had been no hiatus, the continuation of that story which was to thrill me as nothing else of the kind had ever done.
You must understand that she was pleading for my life, as she believed, in the relation of this bit of history which I was soon to learn had touched her so closely. She believed that my life could be saved only by means of my joining with the nihilists, in consenting to take their oath, and to become one with them. I have often, at retrospective moments, gone back again to that hour, and lived it over in thought, wondering how I could still resist her when I listened to the pa.s.sion of her utterances, and to a recital of the terrible wrongs that had been visited upon those whom Zara loved, in the name of the czar.
As before, she told the story as if I had been the partic.i.p.ant in it; as if the young woman whose history it touched most closely, had been my own sister.
In the retelling of it, I purposely render it as concise as possible, but I am utterly incapable of imparting to it the dramatic effect of her recital, heightened and added to by her warm sympathies.
"Remember," she said, "that I am representing you as the brother of this poor girl, Dubravnik. You, and your sister Yvonne, orphaned in your youth, occupied together the great palace of your father"s, and were waited upon by an army of servants, many of whom had been in the employ of your family before either of you were born.
"Among your acquaintances there is another officer, one who is as great a favorite at court; and within the palace of the emperor, as you are.
He is of good family, handsome, accomplished, and rich. Nevertheless, you dislike him, princ.i.p.ally because he is in love with your sister and you know that he is, in every way, unworthy of her. She shares the aversion which you feel for this man, declining all his advances, and at last refuses to receive him. Beginning with that time, he persecutes her with his attentions, to the point where you are led to interfere; but this man has already been to the czar, and has secured his royal approval of the marriage. He laughs at you when you remonstrate. You also go to the czar, who listens attentively to all that you have to say, finally consenting that Yvonne shall not be forced into the marriage against her will. This officer, when he hears of it, is furious, and one night, at the club, he publicly insults you, so that you have no other course than to challenge him. He is a practiced duelist, and believes that he can kill you easily; thus he would leave the coast clear for his further machinations. In the affair which follows, you surprise everybody by wounding your adversary quite seriously; and during a few months that succeed the duel, you are relieved of further anxiety concerning the matter. But he recovers; he returns to his former position at the palace; and misjudging his power and influence, insults you again, almost in the presence of the emperor. For that, he is banished from the palace, and degraded in the army; and quite naturally he attributes his misfortunes to you, upon whom he vows vengeance. You hear of his threats, but laugh at them--and forget them. He does not.
"This man becomes a nihilist and a dangerous one. He plots and plans for your overthrow, and for the possession of your sister whom he continues to persecute in many ways. She does not tell you these things, fearing the consequences if you were to fight another duel. At last, however, more or less of it comes to your attention, and the consequence is that you publicly horsewhip him, for which act you are suspended from attendance at the palace for thirty days. During that interval a horrible thing occurs. It is at the time when the extremists among nihilists are rampant, and when the secret police does its deadly work unquestioned; a time five years ago. People are arrested and spirited away, from among the highest and the lowest. Victims are found in the palace as well as in the hovel. No person is sacred from these mysterious arrests; no tribunal hears a victim"s defense; no official dares to interfere. Even you may at any moment become a victim of this awful method. A complaint is lodged against a wholly innocent person, no matter by whom; it may even be anonymous. In the dead of night police from the Third Section visit the house of the person complained against, a search is made, and if incriminating doc.u.ments are found, that person disappears forever. Where? n.o.body knows save those who carry out the secret decree. I will not worry you with the useless details; in fact you have had sufficient introduction to the story already.
"Twice each week since your expulsion from the palace you are compelled to remain on duty over night, and at last the morning comes when you return to your home after one of these vigils to find yourself face to face with a horror which you knew existed, but which you had never before comprehended. Ah, it is pitiful; but listen. You find when you arrive, that all is excitement. The servants are running hither and thither; they whisper among themselves, and at first you can get no explanation from them. In vain you call for your sister. Frightened glances, sobs, and groans, are the only replies you get, and you rush to her apartment, only to find that it is empty--that she is gone. The room is in the utmost disorder. Clothing is scattered everywhere.
Yvonne"s most sacred treasures are strewn upon the floor. The contents of her dressing case are tumbled in confusion upon the furniture.
Chairs are overturned. The cushions of the chairs and couches are ripped open. The bed is a ruin, dismembered, torn apart, and heaped in a corner. The carpet has been pulled from its fastenings, and is rolled and tumbled into a ma.s.s in the middle of the floor. The pictures are torn from the walls; vases have been overturned; even the French clock, on the mantel, has been ruined in the awful search, and the very walls of the room are dented by the hammer which has pounded them in the effort to find a secret hiding place. You know only too well what has happened, and yet you do not realize it. You are dazed. You think that you will awake and find that it is all a dream. You cannot believe that it is the sleeping room of your own sister that has been thus invaded and desecrated. At last from one of the older and more trusted servants you hear the truth, and while he speaks, you listen dumbly, wonderingly."
Zara left her place beside me on the divan, and stood facing me, near the center table, and in the intensity of her story, lowered her voice perceptibly. She bent forward a little, unconsciously throwing over me the same sort of spell that now dominated her. In my own eagerness I leaned forward, my right elbow resting upon my knee, and with bated breath, waited for her to continue. When she did resume, it was with a suppressed intensity that is indescribable.
"This is what the old servant told you: An hour after midnight there was a peremptory summons at the door, and when he opened it he discovered beyond the threshold, one of those terrible details of fiends which the Third Section sends out on its foulest errands; but he did not dream that they were after your sister; he only thought that you were in trouble. The officer in charge went straight to the door of your sister"s room, as if he were as familiar with the internal arrangements of the house, as were its regular inmates. He threw the door ajar without warning, and followed by the scoundrels who accompanied him, entered the room where your sister was in bed.
Sleeping innocence was aroused by a brutal command. Your sister, as pure, as sweet, as guiltless of wrong, as beautiful in spirit as the angels in heaven, was dragged from her bed by the rough hands of those human devils. Her shrieks and cries, were answered by jeers. Her piteous appeal that they would leave the room until she clothed herself, was refused with curses. She was compelled to dress in their presence, underneath the blazing glare of every light in the room, and before the eyes of those inhuman wretches whose gloating, bloodshot gaze befouled her sweet purity, as a drop of filth will befoul a limpid spring."
"If you had entered the room at that moment, and the czar had been there, would you have killed him, Dubravnik? Have you a sister? Answer!
Would you have killed the czar, if he had been there? THE CZAR WAS THERE!"
Zara raised herself to her full stature as she cried aloud this statement. Her right hand was raised high above her head; her att.i.tude was one of righteous denouncement, and the wrath of an outraged G.o.ddess glowed like living fire, in every attribute of her being. Then she came a step nearer to me, and continued:
"He was there in the spirit of the outrage. He creates and upholds the law which permitted it. Yes, you would have killed him, and you would not have called it murder. You would have given the deed another name; you would have called it retribution. I see it in your face; it flashes in your eyes. I am not telling you a romance, in order to excite your compa.s.sion, or to create sympathy. I am relating an actual occurrence.
I am telling you the story that made me a nihilist."
What a woman Zara was at that moment! She seemed the embodiment of vengeance--of righteous retribution; the personification of the cause she so splendidly advocated. I looked upon her almost with awe, at the same time realizing that I was thrilled almost into active acquiescence to her demands. She continued:
"There are not words to describe the emotions that sweep over you, as you listen to the servant"s story. You become benumbed, dazed. You hear it through to the end, and there is not much more.
"You learn from him that papers of incriminating character were found among your sister"s effects; that a letter was there, which told that she was engaged in a conspiracy to a.s.sa.s.sinate the czar, by poison; that she, being a welcome guest at the imperial palace, had agreed to put poison in the wine that he should drink on the following day--a deadly poison--cyanide of pota.s.sium; that the poison itself was found with the letter--a harmless looking powder, but a deadly one. You are told that Yvonne was dragged away by those men, and taken--ah, the servant could not tell you where they took her; but he could tell you how she sobbed, and moaned, protesting her innocence, repudiating all knowledge of the things they had found, crying out for you, in her agony; and how one of the men struck her a brutal blow in the face, because she would not be quiet. That is all the servant could tell you.
Yvonne was gone. That one truth glared at you from every hideous corner of the desecrated room. Hours--many of them--have pa.s.sed since then.