Chapter V: Foreboding

The echo of the footsteps grew fainter and fainter, and was lost at last in a murmur of other sounds--the sound of a sentry tramping and the clang of arms. Marian listened keenly for some while in the hope that she would hear the steps again, and that Paul would come back to her, repentant of his determination. But the deeper silence of the night fell again anon; the wind moaned dismally across the frozen sea; the crash of the rending ice prevailed, and she knew that she was left alone.

There had been a buzz of voices in the corridor when Paul left her, and she opened the door of the room to hear who it was that had come up to the place. She thought that she could distinguish the deep baying tones of old Bonzo and the cat-like purr of the servant Ivan; but these were silenced in a little time; and she said to herself that she could delay no longer, but must go down to “the Dolls” and to the farce played every night in the gloomy and depressing salon. Though her hands still trembled, and there was a stain of tears upon her cheek, she would not think of that which had happened in the last hour. She cheated herself with the assurance that her lover would not tell; she believed that his love for her would prove stronger than his resolution to guard his honour. At the same time, her prudence did not desert her. Remotely and vaguely she realised the possibility that the work of the night might bring some swift and terrible punishment. Just as she had told her lover everything, so did she determine to tell other accusers nothing. She would play the part of the _ingénue_ again; she would answer their accusations with laughter and little gestures of assumed fear and the weapons of the coquette. The utmost that Paul could do, she said, would be to speak of a suspicion. It would be her business to laugh that suspicion away, to make it ridiculous.

While this was in her mind her fingers were busy in the execution of the plan. Although she was dressed for the comedy of the drawing-room, she began to undress swiftly, loosing the laces of her bodice and casting off her clothes until she was able to unwind from her body a scroll of paper, upon which were many little sketches and names innumerable, and the depths of soundings and the armament of forts. She laughed to herself when at last she thrust into the fire this treasure which had cost her so many months of secret labour and daring schemes. She knew that its contents were written also upon her memory, and that she could make a copy of it from memory alone whenever she might choose.

“They will search me and will find nothing,” she said to herself when the ashes of the paper were scattered. “I shall write to England to-morrow a letter for them to open. They cannot prove that I sent the map to London, and Paul will not tell them. I shall go away from here when the sea will let me, and that will be the end of all. Paul will forget, and I----”

She turned from the fire with a sigh and began to lace up her dress again. A tremulous excitement possessed her, so that she went from place to place in the room, now pulling aside the curtain that she might look upon the moonlit sea; now standing before her glass to discover that her face was drawn and pale and almost haggard; or going to the door to listen for the voices of “the Dolls.” It was nine o’clock when she entered the salon, to find the children sitting like mutes before a picture-book, and old Stefanovitch himself dozing peacefully in a chair. The scene was one with which she was familiar. She took courage of it, and whispered that nothing had happened. She tried to think that Paul had not spoken to her, that she had imagined the scene in the cabinet and that other scene with her lover. It lay upon her to play courageously the part she had played always. When the General awoke with a start, and sat staring at her stupidly through the after haze of sleep, she had a winning smile for him and a ready word.

“How stupid of me!” she cried, with a gesture of feigned amazement. “I did not see that you were resting.”

She paused as though she would draw back, but the General silenced her gallantly.

“Tais toi, tais toi,” said he, sitting upright and searching for his glass; “how shall I keep awake when you are not here? Tell me that, mademoiselle?”

“But I have no business to let you know that I am here--at such a time, General.”

He twisted in his chair, seeking to follow her with his eyes as she crossed the room.

“Du tout, du tout,” he said pleasantly; “you shall sing to me and I shall forget everything. One of the English songs, ma petite--a little song of the lofe--hein, mademoiselle, of the lofe?”

She looked at him prettily over her shoulder, and “the Dolls” rising mechanically to stand one upon either side of the piano, she began to sing the ballad of the King of Thule. She had a voice surpassingly sweet and tender, and music was for her more than an accomplishment, it was an art. The excitement and the passion of the past hour seemed to mingle with the harmonies of the exquisitely tender ballad. Even Stefanovitch, who thought that the angels must play upon trombones, was held in a trance of admiration.

“Magnifique! magnifique!” he cried again and again; “it is the genius which sings like that. You shall be heard in all Russia by-and-by, and the Emperor shall applaud you. Eh, mes enfants, would you not sing like mademoiselle? Is she not superb? is she not beautiful?”

He cackled and applauded again and again, while the children repeated the words after him, though their wooden faces had no change of expression, and the music was meaningless to them.

“Quelle une chanson delicieuse!”

“Oh, mademoiselle, si j’etais vous!”

“It is the song of Marguerite.”

“Sans doute--the song of Marguerite.”

“Si je l’avais connu, Marguerite!”

“Stupide! she is dead; n’est-ce pas, mademoiselle, Marguerite est morte?”

Old Nikolai listened to their chatter and hugged himself at the trend of it.

“Eh, what is that--you wish mademoiselle to tell you about Marguerite? Ho, ho! Another time, children, another time. Mees Marian will first tell that story to me--hein, mademoiselle, you will tell me the story of Marguerite when we are alone?”

Marian rose from the piano, telling herself that it would be a pleasure to box the ears of Nikolai Stefanovitch. But she continued to wear a contented face, for the thought that the friendship of the master of Kronstadt might yet serve her was strong in her mind, and she acted upon it.

“I could not tell you anything, General,” she said; “I should not have the courage.”

“The courage--not have the courage--with me? Oh, but I will give you the courage; you shall lean upon me, mademoiselle. Ho, ho! you shall lean upon me and be strong, and I will put the flowers in the garden--the English flowers, hein? You shall find them and sing the song again.”

She answered with a coquette’s glance. The Dolls stared at their father open-mouthed. They could not understand how it was that he slept when they were with him, or answered them in reluctant grunts, while no sooner was their governess in the room, than these spasms of gesture and ridiculous antics seized upon him, and he became another man. Nor did they recall an occasion when Mademoiselle Marian had responded so willingly to his foolishness. The _rôle_ of the demure and shy little governess was cast off; she had become the coquette to the “tips of her fingers.” Possibly, Mademoiselle Rina and Mademoiselle Varia were very glad when old Colonel Bonzo entered the room and put an end to such strange goings-on.

“You are engaged, my General?” he said, standing motionless at the door.

Stefanovitch was on his feet in a moment. If he had shame to be surprised in such employment, he did not show it.

“You wait for me, Colonel?”

“If you please, my General.”

“There is news, then?”

“There is grave news, Nikolai.”

Marian, who had been turning over the leaves of a book, looked up quickly. The tone in which the Man of Iron spoke, his neglect to pass a word with her, were warnings of instinct. She felt the colour rushing to her cheeks; her hands trembled upon the pages; a voice whispered to her--a voice of her imagination--“Paul has told them that is the news.” Excitement of the hour alone had enabled her to bear up before the General and the children. She had almost cheated herself into the idea that her alarms were foolish shadows created by her fancy; but now, when she looked Bonzo full in the face, it was as though the hand of the accuser already touched her shoulder. Grim, and stern, and unbending, the Man of Iron watched her with a searching gaze which stifled the words upon her lips and held her chained by fear to the lounge. “He knows,” she thought; “he knows, and has come here to tell the other. Paul has spoken, and this is the end.”

“Mademoiselle, voulez-vous monter en haut?”

“Mademoiselle, I have the wish to sleep.”

The children spoke, and Marian rose with an effort. She turned to bow to the men, but they had already left the room. She did not know that minutes had elapsed while this agony of uncertainty troubled her. She had not seen the stately salute with which the master of Kronstadt had taken leave of her; the dreaded searching eyes of old Bonzo still seemed to look her through and through, although the Colonel was no longer in the room. They followed her, she thought, from the salon to the bedrooms of the children; they watched her again in the corridor; the same sensation of dread, and the desire to hide herself, was with her when she entered her own apartment and locked the door, and sank, weak, and trembling, and afraid, upon the couch.

It was near to the hour of ten o’clock by this time, and the bugles were blowing in the barracks of the town. Marian had heard them often when she sat alone in the room, and had welcomed them as a message coming from the haunts of men. She asked herself if she would hear them to-morrow. She looked across the jagged sea, billowed with pinnacles of ice and swirling floes, and found in it the frozen barrier lying between her and freedom. She began to ask herself if she could seek any place of shelter upon the island. Had it been summer, some English ship might have given her harbourage; but now, when the Gulf was wrestling with the fetters of the ice, and no ships could venture from the harbours, what hope was there of that? She could distinguish in the courtyard below her window the shining barrel of the rifle which the sentry carried. The vast mass of the ramparts beyond showed other sentries swiftly pacing the outworks of the fort. The tomb could not have caged its victim more surely than Kronstadt had caged the woman who had betrayed her.

Midnight was struck in the town before she began to undress. Her unwilling fingers went clumsily to the work; and when she had laid her pretty gown upon the bed she asked herself if she had worn it for the last time. Fear had wrought upon her nerves so pitilessly that she could neither sit nor lie; but must be listening ever for the fall of a foot in the corridor or the sound of voices in the courtyard without.

“They will come in five minutes--in ten,” she would say. And she began to plan the defence she would make, repeating the excuses she must plead and the arts she must practise.

Or again, she would trust in the man’s love, telling herself that Paul would not harm her, that he would find some way. She could not believe that Fate would cut her off in a moment from the light of life and the love of life, and that little world of self-content she had created. All the comforts about her--the cheery fire in the stove, the pretty chairs, the pictures, the bed wherein she had dreamed of little Dick so often--she thought of these, and asked herself what magician’s wand could spirit them away and set up in their place the reeking walls of a prison. She had dared much, but the penalty of her daring remained for her a phantom of her fears.

Her long brown hair was tumbling upon her shoulders now, and she passed from her sitting-room to the little white alcove wherein her bed stood. All was very still and quiet here; she could distinguish no longer the wash of the waters over the ice nor the tramp of the sentries upon the ramparts. She shivered with the cold, and lay for hours wondering why the great house slept and no one came to accuse her. When, at last, the lagging dawn was winged, white and misty across the sea, sleep took pity upon her, and a befriending dream put her arms about the neck of the child she loved, and she held him close to her; and anon she walked with him through the lanes and gardens of her beloved England. Nor did she know that when next she slept it would be in the lightless dungeon of Fort Alexander at Kronstadt.