Chapter XXX: A Bygone Tragedy

He sat so long silent after that outburst that I feared he might not be willing to tell me any more of what I was painfully eager to hear.

"Did she--the Countess Anna--die here, sir?" I asked at last.

He roused himself with a start.

"I beg your pardon; I had almost forgotten you were there," he said apologetically. "Die here? No; better, far better for her if she had! Still, she was not happy here. The old people did not like her; did not try to like her; though I don't know how they could have held out against her, for she did her best to conciliate them, to conform to their narrow ways,--except to the extent of coming to church with them. She was a devout Roman Catholic, and she explained to me once how the tenacity with which the Polish gentry held to their religious views was one more cause of offence against them in the eyes of the Russian bureaucracy and episcopacy. I don't think Mrs. Pendennis--Anthony's mother--ever forgave me for the view I took of this matter; she threatened to write to the bishop. She was a masterful old lady--and I believe she would have done it, too, if Anthony and his wife had remained in the neighborhood. But the friction became unbearable, and he took her away. I never saw her again; never again!

"They went to London for a time; and from there they both wrote to me. We corresponded frequently, and they invited me to go and stay with them, but I never went. Then--it was in the autumn of '83--they returned to Russia, and the letters were less frequent. They were nearly always from Anna; Anthony was never a good correspondent! I do not know even now whether he wrote to his parents, or they to him.

"I had had no news from Russia for some months, when Mr. Pendennis died suddenly; he had been ailing for a long time, but the end came quite unexpectedly. Anthony was telegraphed for and came as quickly as possible. I saw very little of him during his stay, a few days only, during which he had to get through a great amount of business; but I learned that his wife was in a delicate state of health, and he was desperately anxious about her. I fear he got very little sympathy from his mother, whose aversion for her daughter-in-law had increased, if that were possible, during their separation. Poor woman! Her rancour brought its own punishment! She and her son parted in anger, never to meet again. She only heard from him once,--about a month after he left, to return to Russia; and then he wrote briefly, brutally in a way, though I know he was half mad at the time.

"'My wife is dead, though not in childbirth. If I had been with her, I could have saved her,' he wrote. 'You wished her dead, and now your wish is granted; but I also am dead to you. I shall never return to England; I shall never bring my child home to the house where her mother was an alien.'

"He has kept his word, as you know. He did not write to me at all; and it was years before I heard what had happened during his absence, and on his return. When he reached the frontier he was arrested and detained in prison for several days. Then, on consideration of the fact that he was a British subject--"

"That doesn't weigh for much in Russia to-day," I interpolated.

"It did then. He was informed that his wife had been arrested as an accomplice in a Nihilist plot; that she had been condemned to transportation to Siberia, but had died before the sentence could be executed. Also that her infant, born a few days before her arrest, had been deported, with its nurse, and was probably awaiting him at Konigsberg. Finally he himself was conducted to the frontier again, and expelled from 'Holy Russia.' The one bit of comfort was the child, whom he found safe and sound under the care of the nurse, a German who had taken refuge with her kinsfolk in Konigsberg, and who confirmed the terrible story.

"I heard all this about ten years ago," Treherne continued, "when by the purest chance I met Pendennis in Switzerland. I was weather-bound by a premature snowstorm for a couple of days, and among my fellow sufferers at the little hostelry were Anthony and his daughter."

"Anne herself! What was she like?" I asked eagerly.

"A beautiful girl,--the image of her dead mother," he answered slowly. "Or what her mother must have been at that age. She was then about--let me see--twelve or thirteen, but she seemed older; not what we call a precocious child, but womanly beyond her years, and devoted to her father, as he to her. I took him to task; tried to persuade him to come back to England,--to his own home,--if only for his daughter's sake. But he would not listen to me.

"'Anne shall be brought up as a citizeness of the world,' he declared. 'She shall never be subjected to the limitations of life in England.'

"I must say they seemed happy enough together!" he added with a sigh.

"Well, that is all I have to tell you, Mr. Wynn. From that day to this I have neither seen nor heard aught of Anthony Pendennis and his daughter; but I fear there is no doubt that he has allowed her--possibly even encouraged her--to become involved with some of these terrible secret societies, that do no good, but incalculable harm. Perhaps he may have inspired her with an insane idea of avenging her mother; and now she has shared her mother's fate!"

"I will not believe that till I have proof positive," I said slowly.

"But how can you get such proof?" he asked.

"I don't know yet; but I'm going to seek it--to seek her!"

"You will return to Russia?"

"Why, yes; I meant to do that all along; whatever you might have told me would have made no difference to that determination!"

"But, my dear young man, you will be simply throwing your life away!" he remonstrated.

"I think not, and it's not very valuable, anyway. I thank you for your story, sir; it helps me to understand things a bit,--Anne's motive, and her father's; and it gives me a little hope that they may have escaped, for the time, anyhow. He evidently knew the neighborhood well, or he couldn't have turned up at that meeting; and if once he could get her safely back to Petersburg, he could claim protection for them both at the Embassy, though--"

"If he had been able to do that, surely he or she would have communicated with your cousin, Mrs. Cayley?" he asked, speaking the thought that was in my own mind.

"That's so; still there's no use in conjecturing. You'll not let my cousin get even a hint of what I've told you, Mr. Treherne? If she finds out that Pencarrow belongs to Mr. Pendennis, she'll surely cross-question you about him, and Mary's so sharp that she'll see at once you're concealing something from her, if you're not very discreet."

"Thanks for the warning. I promise you that I'll be very discreet, Mr. Wynn," he assured me. "Dear me--dear me, it seems incredible that such things should be!"

It did seem incredible, there in that peaceful old-world room, with never a sound to break the silence but the lazy murmur of the waves, far below; heard faintly but distinctly,--a weird, monotonous, never ceasing undersong.

We parted cordially; he came right out to the porch, and I was afraid he might offer to walk some of the way with me. I wanted to be alone to try and fix things up in my mind; for though the history of Anne's parentage gave me a clue to her motives, there was much that still perplexed me.

Why had she always told Mary that she knew nothing of Russia,--had never been there? Well, doubtless that was partly for Mary's own sake, to spare her anxiety, and partly because of the vital necessity for secrecy; but a mere evasion would have served as well as the direct assertion,--I hated to call it a lie even in my own mind! And why, oh why had she not trusted me, let me serve her; for she knew, she must have known--that I asked for nothing better than that!

But I could come to no conclusion whatever as I leaned against the churchyard wall, gazing out over the sea, dark and mysterious save where the moonlight made a silver track across the calm surface. As well try to fathom the secret of the sea as the mystery that enshrouded Anne Pendennis!

On one point only I was more resolved than ever,--to return to Russia at the earliest possible moment.