The man who crouched near Rouletabille rose in a savage bound and cried out rapidly, wild words, supplicating words, menacing words.
And then-nothing more but strangling gasps. The figures that had moved out from the wall had clutched his throat.
The reporter said, "It is cowardly."
Annouchka"s voice, low, from the depths of shadow, replied, "It is just."
But Rouletabille was satisfied with having said that, for he had proved to himself that he could still speak. His emotion had been such, since they had pushed him into the center of this sinister and expeditious revolutionary a.s.sembly of justice, that he thought of nothing but the terror of not being able to speak to them, to say something to them, no matter what, which would prove to them that he had no fear. Well, that was over. He had not failed to say, "That is cowardly."
And he crossed his arms. But he soon bad to turn away his head in order not to see the use the table was put to that stood in the center of the room, where it had seemed to serve no purpose.
They had lifted the man, still struggling, up onto the little table. They placed a rope about his neck. Then one of the "judges," one of the blond young men, who seemed no older than Rouletabille, climbed on the table and slipped the other end of the rope through a great ring-bolt that projected from a beam of the ceiling. During this time the man struggled futilely, and his death-rattle rose at last though the continued noise of his resistance and its overcoming. But his last breath came with so violent a shake of the body that the whole death-apparatus, rope and ring-bolt, separated from the ceiling, and rolled to the ground with the dead man.
Rouletabille uttered a cry of horror. "You are a.s.sa.s.sins!" he cried. But was the man surely dead? It was this that the pale figures with the yellow hair set themselves to make sure of. He was. Then they brought two sacks and the dead man was slipped into one of them.
Rouletabille said to them:
"You are braver when you kill by an explosion, you know."
He regretted bitterly that he had not died the night before in the explosion. He did not feel very brave. He talked to them bravely enough, but he trembled as his time approached. That death horrified him. He tried to keep from looking at the other sack. He took the two ikons, of Saint Luke and of the Virgin, from his pocket and prayed to them. He thought of the Lady in Black and wept.
A voice in the shadows said:
"He is crying, the poor little fellow."
It was Annouchka"s voice.
Rouletabille dried his tears and said:
"Messieurs, one of you must have a mother."
But all the voices cried:
"No, no, we have mothers no more!"
"They have killed them," cried some. "They have sent them to Siberia," cried others.
"Well, I have a mother still," said the poor lad. "I will not have the opportunity to embrace her. It is a mother that I lost the day of my birth and that I have found again, but-I suppose it is to be said-on the day of my death. I shall not see her again. I have a friend; I shall not see him again either. I have two little ikons here for them, and I am going to write a letter to each of them, if you will permit it. Swear to me that you will see these reach them."
"I swear it," said, in French, the voice of Annouchka.
"Thanks, madame, you are kind. And now, messieurs, that is all I ask of you. I know I am here to reply to very grave accusations. Permit me to say to you at once that I admit them all to be well founded. Consequently, there need be no discussion between us. I have deserved death and I accept it. So permit me not to concern myself with what will be going on here. I ask of you simply, as a last favor, not to hasten your preparations too much, so that I may be able to finish my letters."
Upon which, satisfied with himself this time, he sat down again and commenced to write rapidly. They left him in peace, as he desired. He did not raise his head once, even at the moment when a murmur louder than usual showed that the hearers regarded Rouletabille"s crimes with especial detestation. He had the happiness of having entirely completed his correspond once when they asked him to rise to hear judgment p.r.o.nounced upon him. The supreme communion that he had just had with his friend Sainclair and with the dear Lady in Black restored all his spirit to him. He listened respectfully to the sentence which condemned him to death, though he was busy sliding his tongue along the gummed edge of his envelope.
These were the counts on which he was to be hanged:
1. Because he had come to Russia and mixed in affairs that did not concern his nationality, and had done this in spite of warning to remain in France.
2. Because he had not kept the promises of neutrality he freely made to a representative of the Central Revolutionary Committee.
3. For trying to penetrate the mystery of the Treba.s.sof datcha.
4. For having Comrade Matiew whipped and imprisoned by Koupriane.
5. For having denounced to Koupriane the ident.i.ty of the two "doctors" who had been a.s.signed to kill General Treba.s.sof.
6. For having caused the arrest of Natacha Feodorovna.
It was a list longer than was needed for his doom. Rouletabille kissed his ikons and handed them to Annouchka along with the letters. Then he declared, with his lips trembling slightly, and a cold sweat on his forehead, that he was ready to submit to his fate.
XVII. THE LAST CRAVAT
The gentleman of the Neva said to him: "If you have nothing further to say, we will go into the courtyard."
Rouletabille understood at last that hanging him in the room where judgment had been p.r.o.nounced was rendered impossible by the violence of the prisoner just executed. Not only the rope and the ring-bolt had been torn away, but part of the beam had splintered.
"There is nothing more," replied Rouletabille.
He was mistaken. Something occurred to him, an idea flashed so suddenly that he became white as his shirt, and had to lean on the arm of the gentleman of the Neva in order to accompany him.
The door was open. All the men who had voted his death filed out in gloomy silence. The gentleman of the Neva, who seemed charged with the last offices for the prisoner, pushed him gently out into the court.
It was vast, and surrounded by a high board wall; some small buildings, with closed doors, stood to right and left. A high chimney, partially demolished, rose from one corner. Rouletabille decided the whole place was part of some old abandoned mill. Above his head the sky was pale as a winding sheet. A thunderous, intermittent, rhythmical noise appraised him that he could not be far from the sea.
He had plenty of time to note all these things, for they had stopped the march to execution a moment and had made him sit down in the open courtyard on an old box. A few steps away from him under the shed where he certainly was going to be hanged, a man got upon a stool (the stool that would serve Rouletabille a few moments later) with his arm raised, and drove with a few blows of a mallet a great ring-bolt into a beam above his head.
The reporter"s eyes, which had not lost their habit of taking everything in, rested again on a coa.r.s.e canvas sack that lay on the ground. The young man felt a slight tremor, for he saw quickly that the sack swathed a human form. He turned his head away, but only to confront another empty sack that was intended for him. Then he closed his eyes. The sound of music came from somewhere outside, notes of the balalaika. He said to himself, "Well, we certainly are in Finland"; for he knew that, if the guzla is Russian the balalaika certainly is Finnish. It is a kind of accordeon that the peasants pick plaintively in the doorways of their toubas. He had seen and heard them the afternoon that he went to Pergalovo, and also a little further away, on the Viborg line. He pictured to himself the ruined structure where he now found himself shut in with the revolutionary tribunal, as it must appear from the outside to pa.s.sers-by; unsinister, like many others near it, sheltering under its decaying roof a few homes of humble workers, resting now as they played the balalaika at their thresholds, with the day"s labor over.
And suddenly from the ineffable peace of his last evening, while the balalaika mourned and the man overhead tested the solidity of his ring-bolt, a voice outside, the grave, deep voice of Annouchka, sang for the little Frenchman:
"For whom weave we now the crown Of lilac, rose and thyme?
When my hand falls lingering down Who then will bring your crown Of lilac, rose and thyme?
O that someone among you would hear, And come, and my lonely hand Would press, and shed the friendly tear- For alone at the end I stand.
Who now will bring the crown Of lilac, rose and thyme?"
Rouletabille listened to the voice dying away with the last sob of the balalaika. "It is too sad," he said, rising. "Let us go," and he wavered a little.
They came to search him. All was ready above. They pushed him gently towards the shed. When he was under the ring-bolt, near the stool, they made him turn round and they read him something in Russian, doubtless less for him than for those there who did not understand French. Rouletabille had hard work to hold himself erect.
The gentleman of the Neva said to him further:
"Monsieur, we now read you the final formula. It asks you to say whether, before you die, you have anything you wish to add to what we know concerning the sentence which has been pa.s.sed upon you."