Chapter XVI: The Moment of Vengeance

Zara's intensity of passion during her dramatic recital, had imparted itself to me, so that when she ceased speaking for a moment, I felt myself glowing and throbbing with all the excitement that absorbed her. It seemed almost as if I were, indeed, the person who was concerned in the story she had related, and my nerves were strung to the point where I felt that I could go out and kill the czar for the wrongs that had been committed in his name; if not at his connivance, certainly with his permission, and with the presumption of his approval. She withdrew from me and crossed to the window, where she stood looking out upon the snow clad street; suddenly she started, and turned to me. How beautiful she was and how I loved her at that moment!

"Come here, Dubravnik," she said. I obeyed, and in an instant was at her side at the window.

"What is it?" I asked.

"There; look yonder. Do you see that _karetta_, just beyond the corner?"

"Yes. I see it."

"It has all the appearance of waiting for a passenger who is supposedly within one of the adjacent houses, has it not?"

"It certainly has," I replied, smiling.

"My love, I recognize that _karetta_, and the man in charge of it. It belongs to--never mind whom. That does not matter. But the man incased in fur, who seems to be the driver, is a nihilist; within the enclosure, there is certainly one, and possibly there are two more men. Each of them has sworn to take your life at the cost of his own, if need be. They will wait there until you leave me. Then they will do their work. Do you still doubt that you have been sentenced to death?"

"I have not doubted it, sweetheart."

"But do you doubt their ability to carry out the decree?"

"I do."

"Ah, Dubravnik, you little know the men with whom we have to deal."

How sweet it was to hear her include herself with me, against them. "They are like bloodhounds on a trail. They never leave it, nor tire. They are indefatigable. When one falls, another takes his place. They number thousands, and you are one."

"WE are one," I corrected her, smiling. "I do not doubt their intentions, but I have not lived till now, and found you, to be killed by the nihilists."

She gazed at me a moment in silence, and then, slowly, she added:

"Do not think that I sought to frighten you by what I just said. I already know you much too well for that. My intention was to warn you."

"I understood you, dear, perfectly."

She turned away from the window again and faced me, and her eyes were glowing with the light of love. Again for the moment we were face to face with the perils that menaced us from the outside, and before that consideration, all else faded to nothingness with Zara. A little while ago she had repudiated me, but all-conquering Love had stepped in again, had overpowered her, enthralled her, and I could see that she was more than ever mine own, now.

For a space we looked into each other's eyes across the short distance that separated us. We were reading each other's souls, and both saw and understood all that the heart of love could desire. It was an undiscovered country to each of us, upon which we trod just then; a new creation that was the sweeter because of its strangeness.

"I love you!" Zara whispered; and she came nearer until her hands rested upon my shoulders, until her face was close to mine so that I could feel her sweet breath against me. Her lips were parted slightly in a half smile, and I knew that she had forgotten the waiting _karetta_ with its freight of assassins.

I took her in my arms, slowly, tenderly, firmly. I held her pressed closely against me for a moment and then my lips sought hers, and hers sought mine. It was a oneness of desire, a singleness of purpose that brought us together in the kiss of perfect love; and we remained so while minutes sped. I closed my eyes and held her the more tightly against me, so that I could feel the throbbing of her heart and the quivering eagerness of her lithe body, warm against my own. We forgot the dangers and perils that surrounded us; forgot the world and all it contained; forgot life and death, czars and their empires, nihilists and their plots, remembering nothing, in that great spasm of adoration. We did not speak. There was no occasion for words. There came no opportunity to utter them. But we breathed, and breathed together. Our hearts throbbed in unison. Our souls communed, intermingled, blended into one. We sighed together, thought together, until my own senses reeled under the strain of it, and I knew that Zara was more than half unconscious of all things save her present contact with me. Ah, heaven, the greatness of it! The magnificence of that moment! The rapture of her caress, and the great joy of mine to her!

Presently I felt her clinging arms relax and I guided her tenderly toward a huge chair. I lifted her as if she were a child and put her softly down among the cushions; and I dropped to my knees, still holding her, still with my arms wound tightly around her.

For a long time after that we were silent, and Zara was the first to rouse from our mutual revery.

"Dubravnik," she said, and you can have no idea how sweetly that name was made to sound by her utterance of it, "I have not yet completed the story I was telling you; but there is only a little more, and you must hear it."

"Yes," I replied. "As you will, Zara. I am content. But need we go more deeply into the sorrows of that poor girl and her suffering brother? Let us rather talk of the great joy that has come to us. There seems to be nothing but joy in the world, when I look into your eyes. Ah, little one, it is sweet indeed to be loved by you."

"And sweeter still to love you," she retorted, smiling and rousing herself. "Sit here in this chair," she added, rising and forcing me to do the same; and when I had complied she drew a large hassock toward me, and seating herself upon it while she rested one shapely arm across my knees, with her face upturned to mine, she continued the story.

"Shall I continue to represent you as being the embodiment of the character I am describing?" she asked.

"If you prefer it so."

"Listen, then, for I think I do prefer it so. I want you to hear the story to the end, for it will make you understand many things which are now obscured; and if I give you the part of the great actor in this tragedy, that also is for a purpose."

"Yes, dear."

"You returned to St. Petersburg intent upon two things, and only two. After those two duties should be accomplished, you meant to take your own life; and in that purpose you were upheld by those among your friends who knew your story.

"You meant to kill the man who had betrayed your sister into the hands of the police, and after that to destroy the real author of all her misfortunes and yours--the czar. You had changed so that you needed no disguise. Had your sister been alive and well, and had she met you on the street she would not have known you. Your once tall form so erect and soldier-like, was bent, and your former quick tread had become unsteady. Your hair, black as the wing of a raven when you went away, was now white, like the snow that is heaped out there in the street. None of your old friends recognized you although you met and passed many of them on the avenues and streets in the full light of the day. Even your fiancé who loved you better than she did her life, saw you and passed you by unheeded. She saw your wistful glance, and looked upon you wonderingly; but she, like others, believed that you were dead, and although she felt that her heart leaped to her throat and that a spasm of sorrowful recollections convulsed her when she glanced into your eyes, yet she did not know you. And you--you thanked God that she did not, for you knew that she would have flown into your arms then and there--would have risked Siberia with all its horrors for one more word of love from you. So you passed each other on the street so nearly that her furs brushed against you, and she never knew--never knew--until long after you were dead, when those friends who had helped you when all others failed, went to her and told her."

"You were an invalid when you returned to St. Petersburg, and you waited for health and strength before completing your work. You had learned patience during those weary months of searching and waiting in Siberia. Then, too, that same Russian officer whom you had sworn to kill, was absent, and you wished him to return. Your friends told you that he had been restored to favor with the czar, that he had been sent to a post in Siberia; but when you arrived he was expected back within the month. He was to take the very place and assume the same official rank that you had once filled in the palace, next to the sacred person of the czar. Ah! If you could only find them together, and destroy them at the same time! Such a climax would be sweet indeed. It was for that that you waited and hoped. But he did not come; you waited, and he did not come.

"During all this time you were like a child in the hands of your friends. You did precisely what they told you to do, no more, no less. You were absorbed by the one idea. You could not see nor reason beyond that. You even forgot your fiancé and your love for her, save on that one day when the sight of her on the street brought her vividly before your mind; but the following morning even that recollection was gone. At last your madness changed to a type more morose and sullen. The delay fretted you, and one day without consulting your friends, you resolved to act. You had reason enough left to know that your mind was growing weaker and you feared that it would be altogether shattered; that you would never avenge the fate of your sister unless you acted at once. You told nobody of your intention, but you armed yourself with a pistol and started for the palace. You had determined to kill the czar before your reason fled utterly."

"Regarding the two hours that passed between the time you were last seen by your friends, and the events that happened in the palace that day, nothing is known. What streets you traversed on your way there; how you gained admittance to the palace, which was guarded as strictly as it is now; how you passed the guards and gained access even to the cabinet of the emperor, are mysteries which have never been solved, and never will be this side of the grave. All that is known is that you ware your old uniform, the same one from which the czar once tore the buttons, and it is possible that it had something to do with passing you through. At all events you did pass them all, and you did reach the person of the emperor himself. Ah, it must have been grand! I would that I could have been with you then! I would that I could have seen and heard all that took place there at that time--the only time when the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth has been told to his august majesty. There was one of our agents there who heard it all; that is how I know about it now."

"The emperor was alone when you entered, and you had closed and locked the door of the cabinet before he discovered your presence. He did not know that you were there until a sharp command from you caused him to raise his head; but it was only to see you standing there with the pistol in your hand aimed at his head, and to hear you say that if he uttered one cry for assistance, or attempted to call for help in any way, you would shoot."

Zara leaped to her feet and strode rapidly across the room twice, wringing her hands. She paused, confronting me.

"Oh, my God!" she cried. "To think, if you had only told your friends of the errand, and of the plans you had made for reaching the presence of the czar, that it would have succeeded and you would have killed him--_killed him_."

She rushed again to my side, and seized me by the shoulders, so that she turned my face until it exactly confronted hers.

"Dubravnik," she cried. "I can almost believe that I am indeed talking to him--to the man whose history I am relating--when I look at you. In some ways you are like him, so like him! But I will still deceive myself with the idea that I am really talking to him about himself. It is easier so. Oh, my love, be patient with me. I must forget for the moment that you are the man I love. I must compel myself to believe that I am talking to him--to the brother of Yvonne."

"Alexander was always a coward, and he proved it then. He thought that his hour had come, and that a just vengeance for all the lives that he had taken, was about to fall upon him.

"'Do not shoot,' he pleaded. 'You shall have any demand you wish to make. Everything you desire shall be granted.' You only laughed at him.

"'Do you know who I am?' you cried.

"'No,' he replied. 'Who are you?'

"You told him your name, and he cowered lower in his chair, begging for mercy as a hungry dog begs for food; and all the time you laughed, repeating at every pause he made, those words so terrible for him to hear: 'I have come to kill you because you killed Yvonne.'

"Once he attempted to leave his chair, but you warned him to remain seated. You rehearsed the evils he had done, and was doing. You told him of the night when your sister was arrested. You related how the police had invaded her room. You went over again, the story of your pleading with him. You repeated how he had torn the buttons from your coat, and disgraced you because you loved your sister. You left no detail unrecited concerning that time of weary waiting you had undergone, while seeking tidings of your sister. You described the long journey to Saghalien, and the disappointment that awaited you when you arrived. And all the time he cringed lower and lower in his chair, expecting each moment that you would work yourself into the additional frenzy that was necessary to make you pull the trigger of your weapon. Ah, you made him suffer tortures such as he never endured, before or since, even if you did not succeed in killing him. Then, slowly, and with deadly earnestness, you related the story of the months of wandering over Siberia searching for Yvonne, and finally you came to the climax, where you told of her discovery and her death, at your own hands. You had approached nearer and nearer to him during the recital. Twice there had been a summons at the door of the cabinet, but each time, threatened by your pistol, the czar had ordered that he was not to be disturbed. Now, as you came to the end of all you had to say--as you told how you had returned to St. Petersburg, and why you had waited so long before the killing, hoping also to find the other and to kill him, too, you put the pistol almost in Alexander's face, and with a loud laugh of exultation--for you were mad, then, mad--you pulled the trigger."