"Mark her present," interrupted the officer in command. "No ceremony, now. Mark the cub Romanoff present. Mark "em all--Olga, Tatyana, Marie, Anastasia!--no matter which is which--they"re all Romanoffs----"
But the same soldier who had interrupted before bawled out again: "They"re not Romanoffs! There are no German Romanoffs. There are no Romanoffs in Russia since a hundred and fifty years----"
The little Tzesarevitch, Alexis, red with anger, stepped forward to confront the man, his frail hands fiercely clenched. The officer in command struck him brutally across the breast with the flat of his sword, shoved him aside, strode toward the low door of the chapel crypt and jerked it open.
"Line them up!" he bawled. "We"ll settle this Romanoff dispute once for all! Shove them into line! Hurry up, there!"
But there seemed to be some confusion between the nuns and the soldiers, as the latter attempted to separate the ex-Empress and the young Grand d.u.c.h.esses from the sisters.
"What"s all that trouble about!" cried the officer commanding. "Drive back those nuns, I tell you! They"re Germans, too! They"re Sascha"s new Deaconesses! Kick "em out of the way!"
Then the novice, who had cried out in fear when the Red infantry first entered the chapel, forced her way out into the file formed by the Empress and her daughters.
"There"s a frightful mistake!" she cried, laying one hand on the arm of a young girl dressed, like the others, as a Sister of Mercy. "This woman is Miss Dumont, my American companion! Release her! =I= am the Grand d.u.c.h.ess Marie!"
The girl, whose arm had been seized, looked at the young novice over her shoulder in a dazed way; then, suddenly her lovely face flushed scarlet; tears sprang to her eyes; and she said to the infuriated officer:
"It is not true, Captain! I am the Grand d.u.c.h.ess Marie. She is trying to save me!"
"What the devil is all this row!" roared the officer, who now came tramping and storming among the prisoners, switching his sword to and fro with ferocious impatience.
The little Sister of Mercy, frightened but resolute, pointed at the novice, who still clutched her by the arm: "It is not true what she tells you," she repeated. "I am the Grand d.u.c.h.ess Marie, and this novice is my American companion, Miss Dumont, who loves me devotedly and who now attempts to sacrifice herself in my place----"
"I _am_ the Grand d.u.c.h.ess Marie!" interrupted the novice excitedly.
"This young girl dressed like a Sister of Mercy is only my American companion----"
"d.a.m.nation!" yelled the officer. "I"ll take you both, then!" But the girl in the Sister of Mercy"s garb turned and violently pushed the novice from her so that she stumbled and fell on her knees among the nuns.
Then, confronting the officer: "You Bolshevik dog," she said contemptuously, "don"t you even know the daughter of your dead Emperor when you see her!" And she struck him across the face with her prayer book.
As he recoiled from the blow a soldier shouted: "There"s your proof!
There"s your insolent Romanoff for you! To h.e.l.l with the whole litter!
Shoot them!" Instantly a savage roar from the Reds filled that dim place; a soldier violently pushed the young Tzesarevitch into the file behind the Empress and held him there; the Grand d.u.c.h.ess Olga was flung bodily after him; the other children, in their hospital dresses, were shoved brutally toward their places, menaced by b.u.t.t and bayonet.
"March!" bawled the officer in command.
But now, among the dark-garbed nuns, a slender white figure was struggling frantically to free herself:
"You red dogs!" she cried in an agonised voice. "Let that English woman go! It is I you want! Do you hear! I mock at you! I mock at your resolution! Boje Tzaria Khrani! Down with the Bolsheviki!"
A soldier turned and fired at her; the bullet smashed an ikon above her head.
"I am the Grand d.u.c.h.ess Marie!" she sobbed. "I demand my place! I demand my fate! Let that American girl go! Do you hear what I say? Red beasts! Red beasts! I am the Grand d.u.c.h.ess!----"
The officer who closed the file turned savagely and shook his heavy cavalry sabre at her: "I"ll come back in a moment and cut your throat for you!" he yelled.
Then, in the file, and just as the last bayonets were vanishing through the crypt door, one of the young girls turned and kissed her hand to the sobbing novice--a pretty gesture, tender, gay, not tragic, even almost mischievously triumphant.
It was the adieu of the Grand d.u.c.h.ess Tatyana to the living world--her last glimpse of it through the flames of the altar candles gilding the dead Christ on his jewelled cross--the image of that Christ she was so soon to gaze upon when those lovely, mischievous young eyes of hers unclosed in Paradise....
The door of the crypt slammed. A terrible silence reigned in the chapel.
Then the novice uttered a cry, caught the foot of the cross with desperate hands, hung there convulsively.
To her the Mother Superior turned, weeping. But at her touch the girl, crazed with grief, lifted both hands and tore from her own face the veil of her novitiate just begun;--tore her white garments from her shoulders, crying out in a strangled voice that if a Christian G.o.d let such things happen then He was no G.o.d of hers--that she would never enter His service--that the Lord Christ was no bridegroom for her; and, her novitiate was ended--ended together with every vow of chast.i.ty, of humility, of poverty, of even common humanity which she had ever hoped to take.
The girl was now utterly beside herself; at one moment flaming and storming with fury among the terrified, huddling nuns; the next instant weeping, stamping her felt-shod foot in ungovernable revolt at this horror which any G.o.d in any heaven could permit.
And again and again she called out on Christ to stop this thing and prove Himself a real G.o.d to a pagan world that mocked Him.
Dishevelled, her rent veil in tatters on her naked shoulders, she sprang across the chapel to the crypt door, shook it, tore at it, seized chair after chair and shattered them to splinters against the solid panels of oak and iron.
Then, suddenly motionless, she crouched and listened.
"Oh, Mother of G.o.d!" she panted, "intervene now--_now_!--or never!"
The m.u.f.fled rattle of a rather ragged volley answered her prayer.
Outside the convent a sentry--a Kronstadt sailor--stood. He also heard the underground racket. He nodded contentedly to himself. Other shots followed--pistol shots--singly.
After a few moments a wisp of smoke from the crypt crept lazily out of the low oubliettes. The day was grey and misty; rain threatened; and the rifle smoke clung low to the withered gra.s.s, scarcely lifting.
The sentry lighted a third cigarette, one eye on the barred oubliettes, from which the smoke crawled and spread out over the gra.s.s.
After a while a sweating face appeared behind the bars and a half-stifled voice demanded why there was any delay about fetching quick-lime. And, still clinging to the bars with b.l.o.o.d.y fingers, he added:
"There"s a d.a.m.ned novice in the chapel. I promised to cut her throat for her. Go in and get her and bring her down here."
The novice was nowhere to be found.
They searched the convent thoroughly; they went out into the garden and beat the shrubbery, kicking through bushes and saplings, their c.o.c.ked rifles poised for a snap shot.
Peasants, gathering there more thickly now, watched them stupidly; the throng increased in the convent grounds. Some Bolshevik soldiers pushed through the rapidly growing crowd and ran toward a birch wood east of the convent. Beyond the silvery fringe of birches, larger trees of a heavy, hard-wood forest loomed. Among these splendid trees a number of beeches were being felled on both sides of the road.
"Did you see a White Nun run this way?" demanded the soldiers of the wood-cutters. The latter shook their heads:
"Nothing has pa.s.sed," they said seriously, "except some Ural Cossacks riding north like lost souls in a hurricane."
An officer of the Red battalion, who had now hastened up with pistol swinging, flew into a frightful rage:
"Cossacks!" he bellowed. "You cowardly dogs, what do you mean by letting Kaledines" hors.e.m.e.n gallop over you like that--you with your saws and axes--twenty l.u.s.ty comrades to block the road and pull the Imperialists off their horses! Shame! For all I know you"ve let a Romanoff escape alive into the world! That"s probably what you"ve done, you greasy louts!"
The wood-cutters gaped stupidly; the Bolshevik officer cursed them again and gesticulated with his pistol. Other soldiers of the Red battalion ran up. One nudged the officer"s elbow without saluting: