Chapter VI

The change in Pauline’s manner, when Gerald was ushered by an untidy-looking waiter into her sitting room on the following afternoon, was almost electrifying. In place of her usual languid greeting, she sprang lightly to her feet and gave him both her hands. The slight sullenness had all gone from her face. There was no living person just then who would not have found her beautiful.

“You received my telegram?” she demanded eagerly.

“And I came to you at once,” was the prompt reply.

She drew him down to her side upon the sofa. Her manner and tone displayed an animation entirely new to her.

“Reusser returned the night before last,” she said. “He seems to have had a comparatively easy journey, and he reports conditions over there very much more lenient in many ways. He had no difficulty in landing, or in making his way wherever he wished to go. On the other hand, the stories he brings back as to the distress and misery everywhere are simply shocking. The country bleeds to death. There are few trains running, no order, no discipline, despotic and arbitrary police surveillance everywhere. But there is also corruption. People, especially the official classes, are looking everywhere for the means to live. A merchant who was imprisoned only a month or so ago on a charge of murder, to which he actually pleaded ‘Guilty’, was set free the day before Reusser left. It cost him little more than five thousand roubles.”

“Did this man Reusser discover where your brother was?” Gerald asked.

“For ten thousand roubles,” she answered, “he could have searched every police register in Russia. Paul is at the Fortress of St. Maria, at a small town called Sokar, about three hundred miles south of Petrograd. It is a bad journey, of course, but the place is accessible. The Governor of the prison is a Major Krossneys. He is half an Austrian and half a Pole. When he is sober, he is simply greedy. When he is drunk, he is reckless. He is to be managed with ease, but always it is to be remembered that Paul is his chief prisoner. If Paul were to escape,” she went on thoughtfully, “he would, without a doubt, lose his post, certainly his promotion; he might even have to flee the country. To buy him would probably cost a sum of money sufficient to support him for the rest of his life. There are still people who would tear Paul to pieces if they knew who he was.”

“This Major Krossneys,” Gerald enquired, “does he speak French?”

“Fortunately, yes,” was the eager assent. “Tell me, Gerald, what do you think of it all?”

“Just this,” he replied. “I shall sail on Tuesday. There is a steamer from Hull. In less than two months I will bring your brother back.”

Her eyes shone. She seemed to be trembling in every limb. There was ecstasy in her face, passion on her quivering lips. Yet even as he drew a little nearer to her, Gerald was drearily conscious that she had almost forgotten his presence. It was the thought of her brother which had wrought this transformation.

“If I bring him back to you, Pauline----” he began.

She suddenly seized him by the shoulders.

“Bring him back!” she interrupted passionately. “I make no bargain. I give no promise--you should know better than to ask for any such. All that I can tell you is that I would give my soul to see him again.”

Gerald clenched his hands almost in pain.

“Pauline,” he pleaded, “for heaven’s sake, soften just a little. You keep me all the time in torment. Paul shall be set free--I swear it. If it costs me my fortune, my liberty, even my life, he shall be set free. But I’m doing it for love of you. My love is choking me. Soften for one moment. Remember what you will be to me some day. Give me at least a memory to take with me.”

She laid her hand upon his. It seemed to him that it was as cold as the snows. Her eyes looked into his. They were soft and beautiful, full of colour and sweetness, yet they looked him through as though he were a denizen of some other world.

“When I give, I give all,” she said. “You do not understand the people of my race. We cannot give in driblets--a kiss here, a caress there, the promise of more to-morrow. God never made us Russians like that. When I give, it will be the full glory of love. Bring Paul back to me and you may know what that can mean.”

Gerald rose to his feet.

“I should go to my task a stronger man,” he complained, a little bitterly, “if you could throw me the dole one might give to a beggar.”

She gave him her finger tips. She was standing by his side, so near that the desire to hold her in his arms and take from her lips the one kiss he craved was almost irresistible. At that moment he almost hated her.

“Haven’t you even the grace to pretend?” he muttered.

She laughed, wringing her fingers slightly as though his lips had seared them.

“You have been spoilt,” she murmured. “The women you have played with have been your too willing slaves. A trifle of homage, a trifle of philandering, a few shadowy caresses--that is all you have known of love.--Wait!”

Gerald spent that afternoon in the City, the next few days in making restless preparations for his absence from London. On the afternoon of the last day, he was permitted to see Reusser, and he recognised in him at once the man whom he had seen watching over Madame de Ponière and her niece in Hyde Park. The meeting took place in the sitting room of the South Kensington hotel. Reusser, who leaned heavily upon two sticks, was brought thither by a tall youth, his son, who waited for him outside the door. He was as thin as a skeleton, his cheeks were sunken, and every now and then his voice seemed to die away.

“It is my first day out of the hospital,” he told Gerald apologetically. “I caught cold on the way back, and my lungs are not good. Please ask what questions you desire. I am subject to attacks of weakness.”

“I understand,” Gerald said, “that you reached Sokar?”

“I reached it,” he admitted, “but, alas! I was powerless to act. I took with me every penny of money we could scrape together, but by the time I reached the city I was penniless. I lodged at the house of a saddler, whose name you will find in the book I have given you. He took me to look at the fortress. He showed me the room where the brother of Mademoiselle lies. He told me much about Major Krossneys, the commandant of the fortress. But of what avail was it? We had not enough money between us to pay for a bottle of wine.”

“How do you propose,” Gerald enquired, “that I approach Krossneys?”

“The way is arranged,” Reusser replied eagerly. “There is a woman living in the town, half German, half English. Her name is Elsa Francks. To-day Krossneys is her slave. You go first to her. Her address is in the little book you have. She speaks English and French, besides her own language; even some Russian. Talk to her frankly. She will bring you to Krossneys. There is one thing, though. You must go as an American. No one will do anything to help you, although they are all greedy for money, if they think that you are English. It will be quite easy, that. There are many Americans in Russia, prospecting. There is a great oil field on the plains south of Kreussner. Some say there is oil there; others deny it. That is how your bribes must be worked. You will buy property. It will be worth nothing. You will find that Krossneys has land to sell; so has Elsa.”

“I understand,” Gerald said.

“You leave to-morrow?”

“At ten o’clock from King’s Cross,” Gerald assented. “The boat leaves at night.”

Reusser raised his right hand.

“The Father of God speed you!” he said. “Speed is very necessary. The Government has kept that young man alive, hoping that some day he would be useful as a bribe or a hostage, but there are still many fanatics in Russia, haters of his race, who would tear him limb from limb if they knew.”

“I shall be in Petrograd in a fortnight,” Gerald declared, “and at Sokar, I hope, a few days later.”

Reusser once more raised his hand and muttered inaudible words. Nevertheless, though his strength seemed departed, he tried to kneel when Pauline came into the room. She raised him to his feet and called to his son.

“All is well,” she said, dismissing them. “Take care of your strength, Reusser. You must be one of the first to welcome him.”

The man bowed his head and prayed silently. Then his son led him away.

Gerald also rose to his feet. He had nerved himself for this interview.

“I shall have the pleasure of wishing Madame farewell?” he asked.

“My aunt sends you her excuses and her prayers,” Pauline replied. “She is too agitated to risk a meeting. You do not quite know what this means to us.”

“I know,” Gerald said, “what its results may mean to me.”

She looked at him a little sadly.

“My unhappy country,” she sighed, “is to-day only a furnace of woe and suffering, yet in the jumble of it there are a few millions still who would kneel through the night and pray for you, if they knew your mission. I bid you farewell, Gerald, and every throb of my body will live with you. I have sworn that no word of love shall pass my lips, nor any feeling of love linger in my heart, so long as my brother lies in that fortress. But I am here. I would give you anything that would speed you on your journey. It is for you to choose.”

She stood perfectly passive, her arms hanging by her sides. Her eyes looked sadly into his, her lips were composed and still. For a moment the fires burned in his blood. He took a quick step forward. She waited, unmoved, yet without shrinking. So they faced one another for a moment. She extended her hand. Gerald seized it, then dropped it.

“I shall do my best,” he promised hoarsely. “Good-by!”

She listened to his departing footsteps; she even moved to the window, watched him leave the hotel and step into his waiting automobile. He was well enough to look at, good-looking as ever in his slim, lithe way, and with his fine carriage. Nevertheless, there was neither love nor pride in her eyes as she watched him. There was something else, which seemed to point back down the avenues of the history of her family, something, perhaps, which had sounded the knell of their doom, generations before. It was there in her lips, in her eyes, spelled out in her fixed stare,--the cruelty of a race whose heart is given only to passion.