The Red Symbol

He held out a little case, open, and I took it with an unsteady hand. It contained a miniature of Anne, set in a rim of diamonds. I looked at it, – and at him, – but I could not speak; my heart was too full.

“There is no need of words, my friend; we understand each other well, you and I,” he continued, rising and placing his hands on my shoulders. “You will do as I wish, – as I entreat – insist – ?”

“I would rather remain with you!” I urged. “And fight on, for the cause – ”

He shook his head.

“It is a lost cause; or at least it will never be won by us. The manifesto, the charter of peace! What is it? A dead letter. Nicholas issued it indeed, but his Ministers ignore it, and therefore he is helpless, his charter futile and the reign of terror continues, – will continue. Therefore I bid you go, and you must obey. So this is our parting, for though we shall meet, we shall be alone together no more. Therefore, God be with you, my friend!”

When next I saw him he stood with drawn sword, stern and stately, foremost among the guard of honor round the catafalque in the great drawing-room, where all that remained of the woman we both loved lay in state, ere it fared forth on its last journey.

The old house was full of subdued sounds, for as soon as darkness fell, by ones and twos, men and women were silently admitted and passed as silently up the staircase to pay their last homage to their martyr.

Nearly all of them had flowers in their hands, – red flowers, – sometimes only a single spray, but always those fatal geranium blossoms that were the symbol of the League. They laid them on the white pall, or scattered them on the folds that swept the ground, till the coffin seemed raised above a sea of blood.

Every detail of that scene is photographed on my memory. The great room, hung with black draperies and brilliantly lighted by a multitude of tall wax candles; the air heavy with incense and the musky odor of the flowers; the two priests in gorgeous vestments who knelt on either side, near the head of the coffin, softly intoning the prayers for the dead; the black-robed nuns who knelt at the foot, silent save for the click of their rosaries; and the ghostly procession of men and women, many of them wounded, all haggard and wan, that passed by, and paused to gaze on the face that lay framed, as it were, beneath a panel of glass in the coffin-lid, from which the pall was drawn back. Many of them, men as well as women, were weeping passionately; some pressed their lips to the glass; others raised their clenched hands as if to register a vow of vengeance; a few, – a very few, – knelt in prayer for a brief moment ere they passed on.

I stood at my post, as one of the guard, and watched it all in a queer, impersonal sort of way, as if my soul was somehow outside my body.

Although I stood some distance away, the quiet face under the glass seemed ever before my eyes; for I had looked on it before this solemn ceremonial began. How fair it was, – and yet how strange; though it was unmarred, unless there was a wound hidden under the strip of white ribbon bound across the forehead and almost concealed by the softly waving chestnut hair. But even the peace of death had not been able to banish the expression of anguish imprinted on the lovely features. Above the closed eyelids, with their long, dark lashes, the brows were contracted in a frown, and the mouth was altered, the white teeth exposed, set firmly in the lower lip. Still she was beautiful, but with the beauty of a Medusa. I could not think of that face as the one I had known and loved; it filled me with pity and horror and indignation, indeed; but – it was the face of a stranger.

Why had I not been content to remember her as I had known her in life! She seemed so immeasurably removed from me now; and that not merely because I could no longer think of her as Anne Pendennis, – only as “The Grand Duchess Anna Catharine Petrovna, daughter of the Countess Anna Vassilitzi-Pendennis, and wife of Loris Nicolai Alexis, Grand Duke of Russia,” as the French inscription on the coffin-plate ran, – but also because the mystery that had surrounded her in life seemed more impenetrable than ever now that she was dead.

Where was her father, to whom she had seemed so devotedly attached when I first knew her? Even supposing he was dead, why was he ignored in that inscription, save for the mere mention of his surname, the only indication of her mixed parentage. She had never spoken of him since that day at the hunting-lodge when she had said I must ask nothing concerning him. I had obeyed her in that, as in all else, and had even refrained from questioning Vassilitzi or any other who might have been able to tell me anything about Anthony Pendennis. Besides, there had been no time for queries or conjectures during all the feverish excitement of these days in Warsaw. But now, in this brief and solemn interlude, all the old problems recurred to my mind, as I stood on guard in the death-chamber; and I knew that I could never hope to solve them.

The ceremony was over at last. As in a dream I followed the others, and, at a low-spoken word of command, filed past the catafalque, with a last military salute, though I was no longer in uniform, for Mishka had brought me a suit of civilian clothes.

In the same dazed way I found myself later riding near the head of the procession that passed through the dark silent streets, and out into the open country. I didn’t even feel any curiosity or astonishment that a strong escort of regular cavalry – lancers – accompanied us, or when I recognized the officer in command as young Mirakoff, whom I had last seen on the morning when I was on my way to prison in Petersburg. He didn’t see me, – probably he wouldn’t have known me if he had, – and to this day I don’t know how he and his men came to be there, or how the whole thing was arranged. Anyhow, none molested us; and slowly, through the sleeping city, and along the open road, the cortège passed, ghostlike, in the dead of night. The air was piercingly cold, but the sky was clear, like a canopy of velvet spangled with great stars.

Mishka rode beside me, and at last, when we seemed to have been riding for an eternity, he laid his hand on my rein, and whispered hoarsely, “Now.”

Almost without a sound we left the ranks, turned up a cross-road, and, wheeling our horses at a few paces distant, waited for the others to go by; more unreal, more dreamlike than ever. Save for the steady tramp of the horses’ feet, the subdued jingle of the harness and accoutrements, they might have been a company of phantoms. I saw the gleam of the white pall above the black bulk of the open hearse, – watched it disappear in the darkness, and knew that the Grand Duchess had passed out of my life forever.

Still I sat, bareheaded, until the last faint sounds had died away, and the silence about us was only broken by the night whisper of the bare boughs above us.

“Come; for we have yet far to go,” Mishka said aloud, and started down the cross-road at a quick trot.

CHAPTER XLIX

THE END OF AN ACT

How far we rode I can’t say; but it was still dark when we halted at a small isolated farmhouse, where Mishka roused the farmer, who came out grumbling at being disturbed before daybreak. After a muttered colloquy, he led us in and called his wife to prepare tea and food for us, while he took charge of the horses.

“You must eat and sleep,” Mishka announced in his gruff way. “You ought to be still in the hospital; but we are fools, in these days, every one of us! Ho – little father – shake down some hay in the barn; we will sleep there.”

I must have been utterly exhausted, for I slept heavily, dreamlessly, for many hours, and only woke under Mishka’s hand, as he shook me. Through the doorway of the barn, the level rays of the westering sun showed that the short November day was drawing to a close.

“You have slept long; that is well. But now we must be up and away if we are to reach Kutno to-night.”

“You go with me?”

“So far, yes. If there are no trains running yet, we go on to Alexandrovo. I shall not leave you till I have set you safely on your way. Those are my orders.”

“I don’t know why I’m going,” I muttered dejectedly, sitting up among the hay. “I would rather have stayed.”

“You go because he ordered you to; and we all obey him, whether we like it or not!” he retorted. “And he was right to send you. Why should you throw your life away for nothing? Come, there is no time to waste in words. I have brought you water; wash and dress. Remember you are no longer a disreputable revolutionist, but a respectable American citizen, and we must make you look a little more like one.”

There was something queer in his manner. Gruff as ever, he yet spoke to me, treated me, almost as if I were a child who had to be heartened up, as well as taken care of. But I didn’t resent it. I knew it was his way of showing affection; and it touched me keenly. We had learned to understand each other well, and no man ever had a stancher comrade than I had in Mishka Pavloff.

During that last of our many rides together he was far less taciturn then usual; I had never heard him say so much at one stretch as he did while we pressed on through the dusk.

“We have shown you something of the real Russia since you came back – how many weeks since? And now, if you get safe across the frontier, you will be wise to remain there, as any wise man – or woman either – who values life.”

“I don’t value my life,” I interrupted bitterly.

“You think you do not. That is because you are hasty and ignorant, though the ignorance is not your fault. You think your heart is broken, hein? Well, one of these days, not long hence, perhaps, you will think differently; and find that life is a good thing after all, – when it has not to be lived in Russia! If we ever meet again, you will know I have spoken the truth.”

I knew that before many days had passed, and wondered then how much he could have told me if he had been minded.

“If we meet again!” I echoed sadly. “Is that likely, friend Mishka?”

“God knows! Stranger things have happened. If I die with, or before my master, – well, I die. If I do not, I, too, shall make for the frontier when he no longer has need of me. Where is the good of staying? What should I do here? I would like to see peace – yes, but there will be no peace within this generation – ”

“But your father?” I asked, thinking of the stanch old man, who had gone back to his duty at Zostrov.

“My father is dead.”

“Dead!” I exclaimed, startled for the moment out of the inertness that paralyzed my brain.

“He was murdered a week after he returned to Zostrov. There was trouble with the moujiks, – as I knew there would be. The garrison at the castle was helpless, and there was trouble there also, first about my little bomb that covered our retreat. You knew I planned that, —hein?”

“No, but I suspected it.”

“And you said nothing; you are discreet enough in your way. He never suspected, – does not even now; he thinks it was a plot hatched by his enemies – perhaps by Stravensky himself, the old fox! But we should never have got through to Warsaw, if, for a time, at least, all had not believed that he and I and you were finished off in that affair. Better for him perhaps, if it had been so!”

He fell silent, and I know he was thinking of the last tragedy, as I was. The memory of it was hard enough for me to bear; what must it not be for Loris?

“Yes, there was much trouble,” Mishka resumed. “Old Stravensky was summoned to Petersburg, and he had scarcely set out before the revolution began, and the troops were recalled. There was but a small garrison left; I doubt if they would have moved a finger in any case; and so the moujiks took their own way, and my father – went to his reward. He was a good man, and their best friend for many a year, but that they did not understand, since the Almighty has made them beasts without understanding!”

The darkness had fallen, but I guessed he shrugged his shoulders in the way I knew so well. A fatalist to the finger-tips was Mishka.

“The news came three days since,” he continued. “And such news will come, in time, from every country district. I tell you all you have seen and known is but the beginning, and God knows what the end will be! Therefore, as I have said, this is no country for honest peaceable folk. My mother died long since, God be thanked; and now but one tie holds me here.”

“Look, yonder are the lights of Kutno.”

The town was comparatively quiet, though it was thronged with soldiers, and there were plenty of signs that Kutno had passed through its own days of terror, and was probably in for more in the near future.

We left our horses at a kabak and walked through the squalid streets to the equally squalid railway depot where we parted, almost in silence.

“God be with you,” Mishka growled huskily. His face looked more grim than ever under the poor light of a street-lamp near, and he held my hands in a grip whose marks I bore for a week after.

He strode heavily away, never once looking back, and I turned into the depot, where I found the entrance, the ticket office, and the platform guarded by surly, unkempt soldiers with fixed bayonets. I lost count of the times I had to produce my passport; and turned a deaf ear to the insults lavished upon me by most of my interlocutors. I thought I had better resume my pretended ignorance of Russian and trust to German to carry me through, as it did. I was allowed to board one of the cars at last; they were filthy, lighted only by a candle here and there, and crowded with refugees of all classes. I was lucky to get in at all, and, though all the cars were soon crammed to their utmost capacity, it was an hour or more before the train started. Then it crawled and jolted through the darkness at a pace that I reckoned would land us at Alexandrovo somewhere about noon next day, – if we ever got there at all.

But the indescribable discomforts of that long night journey at least prevented anything in the way of coherent thought. I look back on it now as a blank interval; a curtain dropped at the end of a long and lurid act in the drama of life.

At Alexandrovo more soldiers, more hustling, more interrogations; then the barrier, and beyond, – freedom!

I’ve a hazy notion that I arrived at a big, well-lighted station, and was taken possession of by some one who hustled me into a cab; but the next thing I remember clearly was waking and finding myself in bed, – a nice clean bed, with a huge down pillow affair on top, – in a big well-furnished room. That down affair – I couldn’t remember the name of it for the moment – and the whole aspect of the room showed that I was in a German hotel; though how I got there I really couldn’t remember. I rang the bell; my hand felt so heavy that I could scarcely lift it as far, and it looked curiously thin, with blue marks, like faint bruises on it, and the veins stood out.

A plump, comfortable looking woman, in a nurse’s uniform, bustled in; and beamed at me quite affectionately.

“Now, this is better! Yes, I said it would be so!” she exclaimed in German. “You feel quite yourself again, but weak, – yes, that is only to be expected – ”

“Will you be so good as to tell me where I am?” I asked, as politely as I knew how; staring at her, and wondering if I’d ever seen her before.

“Oh, you men! No sooner do you find your tongue and your senses than you begin to ask questions! And yet you say it is women who are the talkers!” she answered, with a kind of ponderous archness. “You are at the Hotel Reichshof to be sure; and being well taken care of. The head?” she touched my forehead with her firm, cool fingers. “It hurts no more? Ah, it has healed beautifully; I did well to remove the strappings yesterday. There will be a scar, yes, but that cannot be helped. And now you are hungry? Ah, we will soon set that right! It is as I said, though even the doctor would not believe me. The wounds are nothing, – so to speak; the exhaustion was the mischief. You came through from Russia? What times they are having there! You were fortunate to get through at all. Yes, you are a very fortunate man, and an excellent patient; therefore you shall have some breakfast!”

She worried me, with her persistent cheerfulness, but it would have been ungracious to tell her so. She was right in one way, though. I was ravenously hungry; and when she returned, bringing a tray with delicious coffee and rolls, I started on them, and let her babble away, as she did, – nineteen to the dozen.

I gathered that nearly a week had passed since I got to Berlin. The hotel tout had captured me at the depot, and I collapsed as I got out of the cab.

“In the ordinary way, you would have been sent to a hospital, but when they saw the portrait – ”

“What portrait?” I asked; but even as I spoke my memory was returning, and I knew she must mean the miniature Loris had given me.

“What portrait? Why, the Fraulein Pendennis, to be sure!”

CHAPTER L

ENGLAND ONCE MORE

I started up at that.

“Fraulein Pendennis!” I gasped. “You know her?”

“I should do so, after nursing her through such an illness, – and so short a time since!”

“But, – when did you nurse her, – where?”

“Why, here; not in this room, but in the hotel. It is three – no, nearer four months since; she also was taken ill on her way from Russia. There is a strange coincidence! But hers was a much more severe illness. We did not think she could possibly recover; and for weeks we feared for her brain. She had suffered some great shock; though the Herr, her father, would not say what it was – ”

She looked at me interrogatively; but I had no mind to satisfy her curiosity, though I guessed at once what the “shock” must have been, and that Anne had broken down after the strain of that night in the forest near Petersburg and all that had gone before it. She had never referred to this illness; that was so like her. Anything that concerned herself, personally, she always regarded as insignificant, but I thought now that it had a good deal to do with her worn appearance.

“And Herr Pendennis, where is he?” I demanded next.

“I do not know; they left together, when the Fraulein was at last able to travel. Ah, but they are devoted to each other, those two! It is beautiful to see such affection in these days when young people so often seem to despise their parents.”

It was strange, very strange. The more I tried to puzzle things out, the more hopeless the tangle appeared. Why had Pendennis allowed her to return alone to Russia, especially after she had come through such a severe illness? Of course he might be attached to some other branch of the League, but it seemed unlikely that he would allow himself to be separated from her, when he must have known that she would be surrounded by greater perils than ever. I decided that I could say nothing to this garrulous woman – kindly though she was – or to any other stranger. I dreaded the time when I would have to tell Mary something at least of the truth; though even to her I would never reveal the whole of it.

The manager came to my room presently, bringing my money and papers, and the miniature, which he had taken charge of; lucky it was for me that I had fallen into honest hands when I reached Berlin!

He addressed me as “Herr Gould” of course, and was full of curiosity to know how I got through, and if things were as bad in Warsaw as the newspapers reported. Berlin was full of Russian refugees; but he had not met one from Warsaw.

“They say the Governor will issue no passports permitting Poles to leave the city,” he said. “But you are an American, which makes all the difference.”

“I guess so,” I responded, wondering how Loris had managed to obtain that passport, and if it would have served to get me through if I had started from the city instead of making that long détour to Kutno.

I assured my host that the state of affairs in the city of terror I had left was indescribable, and I’d rather not discuss it. He seemed quite disappointed, and with a queer flash of memory I recalled how the little chattering woman – I forget her name – had been just as disappointed when I didn’t give details about Cassavetti’s murder on that Sunday evening in Mary’s garden. There are a lot of people in this world who have an insatiable appetite for horrors, – when they can get them at second-hand.

“They say it’s like the days of the terror in the ‘sixties’ over again, – tortures and shootings and knoutings; and that the Cossacks stripped a woman and knouted her to death one day last week; did you hear of that?”

“I tell you I don’t mean to speak of anything that I’ve seen or heard!” I said, feeling that I wanted to kick him. He apologized profusely, and then made me wince again by referring to the miniature, with more apologies for looking at it, when he thought it necessary to take possession of it.

“But we know the so-amiable Fraulein and Herr Pendennis so well; they have often stayed here,” he explained. “And it is such a marvellous likeness; painted quite recently too, since the illness from which the Fraulein has so happily recovered!”

I muttered something vague, and managed to get rid of him on the plea that I felt too bad to talk any more, which drew fresh apologies; but when he had gone I examined the miniature more closely than I’d had an opportunity of doing since Loris gave it me.

It was not recently painted, I was quite sure of that, and yet it certainly did show her as I had known her during these last few weeks, before death printed that terrible change on her face, – and not as she was in London. But that must be my imagination; the artist had caught her expression at a moment when she was grave and sad; no, not exactly sad, for the lips and eyes were smiling, – a faint, wistful, inscrutable smile like the smile of the Sphinx, as it gazes across the desert – across the world, into space, and eternity.

As I gazed on the brave sweet face, the sordid misery that had enveloped my soul ever since that awful moment when I saw her dead body borne past, in the square, was lifted; and I knew that the last poignant agony was the end of a long path of thorns that she had trodden unflinchingly, with royal courage and endurance for weary months and years; that she was at peace, purified by her love, by her suffering, from all taint of earth.

“Dumb lies the world; the wild-yelling world with all its madness is behind thee!”

I started for England next evening, and travelled right through. I sent one wire to Jim from Berlin and another from Flushing, – where I found a reply from him waiting me. “All well, meeting you.”

That “all well” reassured me, for now that I had leisure to think, my conscience told me how badly I’d treated him and Mary. It’s true that before I started from London with Mishka I wrote saying that I was off on secret service and they must not expect to hear from me for a time, but I should be all right. That was to smooth Mary down, for I knew what she was, – dear little soul, – and I didn’t want her to be fretting about me. If she once got any notion of my real destination, she’d have fretted herself into a fever. But if she hadn’t guessed at the truth, I might be able to evade telling her anything at all; perhaps I might pitch a yarn about having been to Tibet, or Korea, for she would certainly want to know something of the reason for my changed appearance. I scarcely recognized myself when I looked at my reflection in the bedroom mirror at Berlin. A haggard, unkempt ruffian, gray-haired, and with hollow eyes staring out of a white face, disfigured by a half-healed cut across the forehead. I certainly was a miserable looking object, even when I’d had my hair cut and my beard shaved, since I no longer needed it as a disguise. Mary had always disliked that beard, but I doubted if she’d know me, even without it.

I landed at Queensboro’ on a typical English November afternoon; raw and dark, with a drizzle falling that threatened every moment to thicken into a regular fog. There were very few passengers, and I thought at first I was going to have the compartment to myself; but, at the last moment, a man got in whom I recognized at once as Lord Southbourne. I hadn’t seen him on the boat; doubtless he’d secured a private stateroom. He just glanced at me casually, – I had my fur cap well pulled down, – settled himself in his corner, and started reading a London paper, – one of his own among them. He’d brought a sheaf of them in with him; though I’d contented myself with The Courier. It was pleasant to see the familiar rag once more. I hadn’t set eyes on a copy since I left England.