"Who else, cousin?" returned Adrian, with exquisite grace. "Who can do so well? How should the country continue without the wise hand that has guided it through these three years? Pray rea.s.sure Baron Dalmorov by telling him that you will still hold in fact the power that nominally you resigned this morning, always aided by my loving support."
Allard grasped the back of a chair; so much even he had never hoped.
Stupefied, Dalmorov gazed paling at Adrian, who leaned tranquilly against the table, his lips curved in a very slight cold smile.
"If you indeed speak seriously, sire, I can have but one reply," Stanief said. "Forgive me for the doubt."
"Since I have taught you it, why not? But the farce is over, the game closed. Dalmorov, pray attend; possibly you also may be interested in the explanation that my cousin asks." For the first time his glance went that way. "At least you best can understand why this game has been played. For a game it has been, Feodor. If a cruel one, why, our race is not gentle nor reared in tenderness. Or to truth, remember that; your mother was an Englishwoman. I give what I have received; you alone ever gave or asked of me frankness. Take it now, if long delayed."
He paused, his lashes fell as if his gaze went back and within. No one moved or spoke as the fire mounted visibly through his calm, shriveling his trained composure and beating against his self-control.
"I love you, my cousin," he said, the quietness forced on his voice leaving it almost monotonous. "I loved you long ago in my lonely childhood, when your rare visits came like sunny flashes across my dreariness and I used to stand at my window to watch you ride by each day. I had no other affections to distract me; I loved you still, however unwillingly, when I went at night to the _Nadeja_ three years ago. But you asked me to trust you, and my training had left me no trust to give. Not that I did not want to trust you, for I did want to give that with a longing you scarcely can understand; but I could not, then.
Look back to then, Feodor, for the commencement of the game ended now.
Loving you, distrusting all alike, I listened to you when you were with me and listened to your enemies when you were not, striving to reach the fact beneath in the only method I have seen practised. There could not have been a more unequal battle, yet at the end of the first year you had won. You and Allard had convinced me that there did exist men different from my world. The vista widened for me; I caught a glimpse of a golden age within the one I so despised, the ancient breath of chivalry claimed life beside me. So the second year opened. The second year--" again the cold glance swept Dalmorov. "How did you employ the second year, Baron?"
"Sire--"
With a shrug Adrian turned from him; this time his eyes met his cousin"s and held them.
"I have not been happy, Feodor," he resumed, the control not quite so perfect. "For one clean word of yours, a thousand poisonous speeches were poured into my ears; never a simple action of yours escaped being shown to me as hiding some sinister motive. When you brought order out of the chaotic country, they explained that you prepared your own Empire; when you paid me your grave deference, they told me it was used to lull a fretful child until he could be removed. When you spoke of the day you would yield the sovereignty to me, they laughed. You guessed some of this? All of it you could not conceive, their incredible ingenuity of falsehood and false witness. And hate them as I would, a little of the venom clung. When the beginning of the third year arrived, I stood alone and surveyed it all; older at sixteen, cousin, than you will ever be. On one side lay the reeking swamp they made of life, on the other the firm white road and you. And I realized then that if you failed me, it would not be an Empire I would lose, but a universe and a belief in G.o.d. Ask Allard some day how I spent last New Year"s Eve."
Allard caught his breath; clearly it stood out in his memory,--that night when Adrian had sent for him near midnight. "Sleep, read, do what you like, but stay where I can see you," had been the curt command. And when dawn had opened grayly across the city, Adrian was still pacing restlessly up and down the fire-lit room, his sorely puzzled companion still watching by the hearth.
"For many months I had held one hope of a definite answer, Feodor, a limit to uncertainty. "After the coronation I will know," I told myself.
"If he lays down the scepter, they have lied." And Dalmorov took from me even that.
""He will crown you," he said, "because so he can keep the faith of the people and yet rule the country through your weakness and love for him.""
Stanief would have spoken, deeply moved, but Adrian checked him while himself coloring with no less emotion.
"Wait still a little. I ask you to remember that never have I taken one step at the suggestion of your enemies or at the wish of this Dalmorov whom you believed my friend. Whichever of us succeeded to Empire, I had the consolation of knowing he would fall. No one has stood between us; alone I decided upon my test and made it, because I had come to the point where I must choose between your world and theirs. I have called this a game--it was the trial of a faith. Need I say the rest? The tax dispute gave the excuse, I feigned a break with you. My cousin, now can you measure the cost to me of the last year?"
He paused for the answer, and finding it written in the mute Stanief"s eyes, went on more hurriedly.
"No one knew the truth, although Iria and Allard nearly tempted me to confidence. I deprived you of the faintest hope of peace with me, I left you to the snarling hate and malice of the court; I even added to ingrat.i.tude the last insult of menace. Through it all you moved steadily toward your goal, holding your head above us all. I have learned, at last. If I avoided you, Feodor, it was because I felt my courage failing before yours. If I have spoken to you curtly, it was because I feared to say this too soon. If I refused to see you after the accident last week, it was because I was sick with horror at the nearness of losing you, because I was too near to ending the pretense of months just before its climax. And I had set my heart on standing with you, thus, and defying even this man to find an accusation that you have not answered. So," he took a step forward and pa.s.sed his hand through Stanief"s arm, the last reserve swept away by his own vivid energy. "So, together; now speak, Dalmorov, before you leave the capital. What selfish motive or hope led the Regent to-day when he came to me in the cathedral?"
At the two Dalmorov looked, attempting no reply. Not pleasant to see was his face in that moment. Allard, quivering, radiant, found room to pity the outgeneraled and annihilated intriguer.
"Nothing?" insisted Adrian, the voice so gentle to his cousin, merciless enough now. "Nothing? Feodor, you see my plaything; never again rate me so low as to credit me with such a favorite. The man who aspired to hold your place; who fancied us both victims of his clumsy intrigues; the man who never even perceived the contempt and dislike I scarcely troubled to conceal, look at him. Dragged from his shadows into the sun, facing you, he has no longer one falsehood to offer."
"Sire," interposed Stanief for very compa.s.sion, himself unsteadied by the happiness that makes generosity easy.
Adrian turned on him swiftly.
"You? You, Feodor? Oh, it needed but that! Thank the Grand Duke for his intercession, Baron Dalmorov, and go."
The last humiliation was too much. Sallow with defeat and bitter mortification, Dalmorov collected himself to strike the only one within reach, the one through whom alone he could wound the others.
"If it has pleased your Imperial Majesty to misunderstand, I may not say misuse, my devotion, I must submit," he said tremulously. "I can do nothing else."
"No, I think not."
"Yet permit me to give a last service due to respect for my sovereign.
My defense I leave to time. This nameless American whom it has pleased his Royal Highness to place near your person, sire, is not fit for such an honor. Rather he should be in the mines."
Stanief started violently, his eyes flashing to Allard, who kept his pose with a serenity drawn from utter helplessness.
"Take care, Dalmorov," Adrian cautioned sternly.
The baron bowed.
"Sire, some months ago chance called me to this investigation. There pa.s.sed through the city a gentleman who had visited the California Allards a year before this man came here. The visitor declared that this was not the Allard he knew, and no other member of the family had alluded to another absent one. Naturally anxious and alarmed, I searched further. The officers of the _Nadeja_ admitted that no one had seen the new secretary until one night his Royal Highness brought him hurriedly aboard, while the yacht lay opposite an American prison. At the exact hour of his arrival, the alarm was raised on sh.o.r.e of the escape of a convict. It is a singular coincidence, sire."
"It is very uninteresting, Baron. What of it?"
"Sire, only loyalty could make me continue. I obtained some journals of that date and a little later. The prisoner who escaped was not recaptured; and out in California the gentleman died whose honorable name this man claims. Give me time, long enough to send to America, and I can find proof that your Imperial Majesty"s favorite companion is the prisoner Leroy masquerading as one who is not living to contradict him.
Why the Grand Duke placed him here, it is not for me to say."
Twice Stanief had moved to speak, and each time the restraining hand on his arm had imposed silence.
"Hush, Feodor; this is my affair," Adrian said, divining the rebellion at this last before it could take speech. "Baron Dalmorov, with time you could no doubt make any proofs you desire; I have seen it done. We close this subject to-day. Are you willing to relieve the baron"s cares, Allard?"
So near the truth, and yet so far from it, had the accusation gone. It was not of himself Allard thought at the moment, but of Stanief, Stanief, who had protected him and who must be shielded from the consequence.
"Sire, I am John Allard," he replied, giving that fact with the appeal of sincerity. "The Allard to whom Baron Dalmorov refers was my brother Robert. For the rest, it is perfectly true that I was not in California the year before I came here. The American who did not recognize me was of course my brother"s guest during my absence."
"You do not comprehend," Adrian corrected sweetly. "I never intended to ask you to defend yourself against this chain of absurdities. I do not admire your a.s.sailant"s methods, and I adopt my own. I would ask if both you and Dalmorov will be content with the evidence of a witness who knew the California Allards beyond dispute."
"Certainly, sire," he answered, wondering, yet welcoming any course that led them from New York.
"Sire, if any Californian identifies this man, of course my case fails,"
conceded Dalmorov with his bitter smile. "But, it will not be so."
"Pray ring the bell, Allard, twice," directed Adrian.
They waited in silence. Adrian moved to a chair. Stanief sought Allard"s eyes with the steadying message of his own, an intensity of rea.s.surance and protection. In reserve he was holding his own power to ruin Dalmorov, and he fiercely reproached himself with not having foreseen and used it before this could have happened.
But Allard showed no agitation to his keen watchers. It seemed to him that this had been closing around him for days, that he had felt the old things reclaiming him as the unseen net drew and tightened. Now there was nothing he could do; the moment balanced, ready to fall either way at the light touch of chance. Away from himself he laid the decision, before a higher tribunal than Adrian"s, setting all his life against one error. The speech of his thought was the same as it once was on the wharf before the Hudson prison: "If I have paid--" Quietly, with a dignity all unconscious, he awaited the judgment.
A rustle of silken garments, a silver echo of a southern voice as the door opened, and Iria was in the room, Iria, flushed, smiling, and by her side a girl in white whom two of those present had never seen. As the d.u.c.h.ess swept her graceful salute to the Emperor, Allard"s cry rang through the place:
"Theodora! Theodora!"
His answer was given. The girl held out her hands as he sprang forward to clasp them; there existed no one else for either during the long moment when they remained gazing in each other"s eyes with the hunger of years.
[Ill.u.s.tration: There existed no one else for either.]
Smiling, Adrian moved forward a chair for Iria, whispering a phrase in pa.s.sing which sent the light blushes to her forehead as she glanced shyly at Stanief. Then, Theodora slipping her fingers from Allard"s with confused recollection of their situation, the Emperor claimed her attention.
"Mademoiselle Leslie, let me present to you the Baron Sergius Dalmorov, formerly of this court. And, since he appears suffering under a strange misconception, do me the favor of informing him who is the gentleman whom you have just greeted."