Chapter XII: The Citadel Awakes

Marian sat in the saloon of the _Esmeralda_, and the saloon was in darkness. She still wore her pretty cap of fur, and the cape was unbuttoned upon her shoulders. Her impatient imagination told her that she had been a full hour in the cabin of the ship waiting for Paul to come to her. But no more than twenty minutes had passed since she had quitted her cell at Fort Alexander. The yacht was still running down the southern shore of the island; the great guns still threatened from the mighty ramparts.

Until this time she understood nothing of her lover’s purpose or of the meaning of her journey. She believed that Paul was compelled thus to steer toward the open sea that he might come to Fort Katherine, which lies upon the northern shore of the island. Little as she knew of ships, the tremendous vibration of everything around her, the rattle of glass, the swirl of the seas against the ports, spoke of high speed and freshening wind. It was her argument that they were making Tollboken, the great lighthouse at the western point of Kronstadt. The ship would put back presently and run down the northern shore to the new prison awaiting her. The sweet hour of liberty would be at an end; the door of a cell would close upon her again unpityingly. When the launch was not put about, but continued to hold its course for the Baltic, she could not understand why it was, and was puzzling her brains to think, when her lover entered the cabin brusquely, with spray shining in crystals of salt upon his oilskins and the dew of the sea upon his cheek. He answered her unspoken question, but not as she wished him to answer it.

“You have no fire and no light,” he said cheerily; “and this is your welcome to the _Esmeralda_. Well, it will be better presently.”

She took his wet hands and held them to her lips.

“Paul,” she cried, “for the love of God tell me, what does it mean? Where am I? where are you taking me to?”

He kissed her upon the forehead very tenderly.

“I am taking you to London--to your friends,” he said.

“Oh, you do not mean it,” she answered impatiently, “you do not mean it, dearest. It is to Fort Katherine. I heard them say so.”

“If you think that I do not mean it, Marian, come up to the deck with me and you will see the light of Tollboken. You had better come, for we shall never look at Kronstadt again.”

He did not wait for her answer, but led the way to the companion and to the deck above. When she stood there with him the wind blew so freshly and the spray so blinded her that she must cling to him for a while and cry that she could see nothing. But anon she got footing by the shrouds of the mainmast, and from that place she looked over the gathering seas and beheld a great white light hanging, as a globe of fire, above the northern point of the island. She remembered that she had seen the light for the first time when she came to Russia to be governess to the children of Nikolai Stefanovitch. But now she was leaving it; the yacht had not rounded the point as she thought it would; it held a course straight for the open sea. She dare not ask herself what this course meant.

“Well,” said Paul, “do you believe me now? Yonder is Tollboken. You are looking at it for the last time.”

She began to tremble at his words.

“For the last time--and you?”

A shadow rested upon his face.

“Moi c’est égal. I am weary of Kronstadt and of my friends there. I shall find new friends in England. Besides, I do my country a service since I take charge of one who has been her enemy. Tell me, little Marian, you will be the enemy of Russia no more.”

He drew her beneath the shelter of his oilskins and kissed the lips upraised to his. But the girl was silent. She could not then measure the sacrifice he had made so willingly. Of all the thoughts crowding upon her mind this thought predominated, that her lover had saved her from the living death.

“I do not understand,” she said at length, “I do not know what you are saying to me. Oh, it is not true, Paul, it cannot be.”

“You shall tell me to-morrow whether it is true or not,” he answered merrily. “Meanwhile, there is supper to think of, and after supper, rest. It is time that we lighted the saloon; you are tired, Marian.”

She was about to tell him that her fatigue was only the fatigue of joy, when a flame of light leaped up from the shore of the distant islands, and the boom of a great gun rolled across the darkening seas like the rumble of approaching thunder.

“Hark!” she said, starting involuntarily; “they have fired a gun from Tollboken.”

Paul turned impatiently.

“It is a captain’s salute, little girl.”

“I think of the shadows again,” she exclaimed with a shudder. And then she asked--

“Paul, whose yacht is this?”

“It is mine, Marian.”

“And you had the Governor’s permission to take me from Alexander?”

“Certainly, or how could you be here now?”

“He gave me my liberty, then?”

Paul laughed.

“You ask too many questions, Marian, and supper should be waiting.”

A second gun fired from the ramparts of Tollboken arrested the laugh upon his face. He could conceal from her no longer the terrible dread which had possessed him since the yacht left Alexander. She read his secret upon his face; she knew that he risked his life for the guerdon of her love.

“Paul,” she said, clinging to him now with a passionate gesture of reproach and gratitude, “I understand all. Oh, God forgive me for bringing you to this!”

“No,” he said, “where you live I must live, Marian; where your home is, there must be my home. It could not be otherwise. Without you there is nothing for me--the sun does not shine, there are no stars at night. We will stand together for good or ill until the end, as God wills.”

“I am not worthy,” she answered through her tears. “Oh, God knows, I am not worthy!”

“You will be my wife,” he said simply; “you will repay a thousand times.”

A grinning face, appearing above the coamings of the engine-room hatchway, put them apart. It was the face of Reuben the engineer.

“Well,” said Paul, turning to him, “you wish to tell me----”

“That she is doing twenty knots, sir.”

“She must do more. Spare nothing. We must burn the very ship if need be. Hark to that! It is the gun at Menzikoff, which means that the garrison is alarmed. We shall see the lights of their ships soon.”

The grinning face disappeared, and anon thick smoke rolled from the funnel of the _Esmeralda_. She plunged with new speed into the choppy, spuming waves which the fresh wind drove in from the Baltic. The water washed her bows and ran ankle-deep over her flush-decks. She had no lights save the glow which hovered above her funnel or spread fan-shaped when the furnace-door was opened. Every timber in her quivered at the heightening speed. Not a man of the four aboard her but knew that this was a race for liberty--it might be for life. Yonder, through the northern darkness, lay freedom and reward; behind, where the guns made thunder of the night, were the prisons of Russia and the fields of Bondage.

Their course lay almost due west for a while and when they had been an hour at sea they could discern the lights upon the Finnish shore no longer nor the twinkling stars which spoke of villages on the Ingrian coast. The Gulf broadened so quickly that they stood almost at once in the heart of the widening sea, in the channel of ships steaming to Russia or labouring to make Helsingfors. At one time a great ironclad loomed above them suddenly and passed so close that they could hear men calling to one another upon her decks. Or, again, they passed a Norwegian barque lubbering in the swell in a vain effort to keep the great breakers from her decks. These shapes loomed out of the dark for an instant to be lost immediately. Scudding white mists hid the moon fitfully as though relishing a jest with those who sought light on the earth below. Storm-clouds began to gather in the south and to beat up warningly. The night fell bitter cold and the wind was as a whip upon the face.

“Come, let us go down,” said Paul, who hitherto had been held to the deck as one chained there by the anticipation of advancing peril. “I have tasted no food since midday; and you, little girl, I should be ashamed to keep you here.”

“My place is at your side, Paul.”

“Then my side shall be in the saloon. And you shall give me my supper there. It will be time enough to think of other things when we see the light of their ships.”

“You think that they will follow us?”

“Is it possible not to think so?”

“They will send a cruiser?”

“Undoubtedly; but we shall not mind that. There is no ship in Russia which can catch the _Esmeralda_ while she has coal in her bunkers; and we have coal everywhere. Oh, it will amuse you well when the fun begins.”

He entered the saloon and switched on the electric lights. The veils for the ports were ready now, and when he had covered up the glasses with them he gave the girl hot wine.

“You must drink it at a draught,” he said. “I want to see the colour in your pretty cheeks.”

“Paul,” she said earnestly, “how can I thank you? how can I tell you all I feel?”

“You can thank me by drinking the wine and afterwards by eating your supper. You must say how you like the _Esmeralda_ and her cook. She is my other self, this little ship. We have been friends many years, but not the friends we shall be to-night.”

The steward, a portly, good-humoured, but, above all, fatherly man, known in twenty ports by the name of Sal, by reason of his ability to perform all woman’s work, now hurried into the cabin and set a steaming dish upon the table.

“A bit of beef, and cooked with my own hand, miss,” he said. “I thought you’d be glad of it, and so I made bold.”

She thanked him prettily.

“You come from London?” she asked.

A voluble man, her question was like oil upon his tongue.

“Indeed and I do, my miss. I was born at West ’Am, as my poor mother knows, and precious glad I shall be to see Hingerland again. It’s a dreadful thing to feel as you’re an ixile, miss. Fourteen years now it is since I clapped eyes on London. As for these Russians, I can’t abide ’em.”

Paul roared with laughter.

“Sapristi!” said he, “you’re a fine fellow to sign for a Russian ship.”

“A Russian ship? No, it ain’t that, sir. I had the word of Reuben afore I come aboard. ‘Where you like and when you like,’ says I, ‘but no foringers for yours truly.’ And that’s what we signed upon. ‘As for the young gentleman,’ says I, ‘he’s no Russian, or what’s he doing with our lingo? You don’t find Joshua Sill sailing with foringers willing.’ Five times round the world, miss, I’ve been, believe me. But there ain’t no place like the country we was bred to, indeed there ain’t.”

His patriotism choked him with emotion, and he withdrew, still shaking his head. His talk had led them away for a brief moment from the hour and the place, and the shadows passed from their faces. It was possible, down there in the warmth and brightness of the pretty cabin, to imagine that they, too, were already upon the seas of liberty and safety; to imagine that they had come to that kingdom of love and possession which they had sought in tears and tribulation and perils often. They began to talk with a new confidence; to promise each other what they would do when the sunny fields of Devon were theirs to roam and the white cliffs of England stood up for their defence. The spell of the warming wine worked upon them so that the man could tell himself that the reward was greater than the sacrifice; the girl, that love was at last born in her heart unquestionably, a love to endure, to overshadow all, to be the very sap of her life. Lying there in her lover’s arms, the past, the future, the scene, the peril alike were forgotten. She lived in a present which was in itself an eternity--the eternity of love realised.

In this employment of supper two hours passed swiftly away. Paul lingered in the cabin because he knew that the deck might show him that which he feared to see--the lights of the cruisers sent out from Kronstadt or Helsingfors in pursuit of the _Esmeralda_. Trusting to the quick eyes and to the devotion of his servant Reuben, he knew that they would summon him when need was that he should go above. The quiver of the boards beneath his feet, the jar of the glass upon the table, spoke of the high speed maintained and of a smoother sea. Could they but keep the _Esmeralda_ at such a speed she would outsteam any vessel which Stefanovitch could command. The danger lay ahead--in the warships at Helsingfors and at Revel. The telegraph could warn these that a launch was escaping from Kronstadt. The _Esmeralda_ had yet to pass the neck of the Gulf, yet to outwit those who would strain every nerve to take her. Folly alone helped Paul to hope in the midst of dangers such as these. Despair whispered that the girl he loved was in his arms, but that he touched her lips for the last time.

“Let us forget, Marian, let us forget all,” he would cry; “let us think only of to-night, and of each other.”

“I could never forget,” she answered with deep affection. “I am unworthy of the love you bestow upon me; I shall be your servant until my death.”

“You shall be my wife!” he cried passionately. “I will hear your words all day. The days cannot be long enough. There shall be nothing to think of--no past, no future, but only the moment of our love. When to-morrow comes we shall be where no Russian ships can harm us. It will be yours then to repay me, dearest, to remember whose servant I have been and why I left Russia. You will be the friend of my country as I shall be of yours. You will forget all that you learnt and saw at Kronstadt.”

“I have forgotten it already, Paul. Oh, I should be for ever guilty if I did not regret all that I have done and said, if I did not think of Russia as of my own country. How could it be otherwise since I love you?”

“They will tempt you,” he said: “they will offer you money as they offered it before; and I am poor, I have no longer an employment. The home which I can give you must be one of your own cottages. My friends will not help me now; they will call me a traitor and forget my name.”

She shrank at the words, for they rebuked her selfishness. She realised she had made him the partner of her guilt.

“Oh, no, no, do not say that!” she cried; “do not let me bring this shame upon you. Take me back to Russia, Paul; to-morrow it will be too late.”

“It is too late now,” he said with a bitter smile.

The door of the cabin opened as he spoke, and the face of Reuben, still wearing the bucolic grin, appeared unwelcomely. Paul rose at once.

“You have something to say to me, Reuben?”

“It is about the coal, sir.”

“Then I will come immediately.”

But to Marian he said--

“You must sleep now, little wife. To-morrow we shall be in the Baltic and sunset will bring us to Stockholm. You can begin to think of England then.”

She raised her lips to his and clung to him with a new tenderness. The words he had spoken, that his friends would call him a traitor, echoed again in her ears. She thought of them still when he had left her, and they were an enemy to sleep. The gift of sacrifice cut her heart; it poisoned the cup of forgetfulness she had tasted so willingly.

But Paul hurried to the deck, and so soon as his feet had left the ladder he knew why Reuben called him. Away upon the port quarter a great arc of golden light was playing upon the sea. Now rising in a focus of dazzling beams, now skimming the water with a vast area of radiance, now shining full as a star new fallen from the heavens, the meaning of the light was not to be hidden from those on board the _Esmeralda_. The telegraph had done its work. A cruiser had put out from Helsingfors and was searching the Gulf for the yacht which sought to carry from Russian waters secrets of such price.

“God help my little wife!” said Paul when he saw the light--and that was all.