Arthur W. Marchmont

“ Haven't we all Russia to hoodwink? Do you suppose your police agents and secret agents are all fools, to see nothing, think nothing, infer nothing? It may be hard for us to be apart, but what else is possible? Even this visit is fool-hardiness itself and may set a thousand tongues clacking. Heaven knows, if ever a pair of lovers had need of caution we have now! Have you dared so much for our marriage only to toss it all away now just for the lack of a little self-control? We must see very little of one another. ”

“ I should like to save that girl. She's one in ten thousand for pluck. And you owe her something too, as she saved my life from a treacherous thrust of Devinsky's sword for you to take it. You might let her have her liberty in its place. It's infernally hard on the girl that her cowardly brute of a brother should let her in for all this mess; and then that I, with all the good will in the world, should thrust her deeper into the mud. It's damned hard! ”

“ At first I could do no more than glance into her eyes as we clasped each the other's hand.
"You are looking frightfully ill, Olga," I said at length.
She returned my look without a word and then her brow contracted, she breathed deeply as if in pain, and turning away wrung her hands with a gesture of despair.
"What is the matter? What has happened to you? There must be something..." I stopped, or rather the sight of the white face all drawn and quivering with pain stopped me.
"Oh, it is too horrible, too awful! God have mercy on us! God have mercy on us!" ”

“ I know how to thrust a dagger home too cleverly to leave a trace of either blood or guilt on me. In all this Moscow of ours the one person who is deemed above all others guiltless—is myself. Had it been in reality the Nihilist deadly secret stroke that men deem it, it could not have been more cunningly contrived, more secretly planned, more fatally executed. Yet the motive was not hate of a Government, but love for a man. For you, Alexis: you and you only. ”

“ I cried; and the next instant, I had wrenched my weapon free and held the man.
"Take care. Back to the room, or behind me, child," I cried, when I heard my opponent curse in his foiled attempt to kill me and saw him turn as if to attack Olga. "Now, you butcher, it's you and I alone; and you or I, to live."
"As you will," he said, and I saw him clench his teeth and set his face in the way men do who know that they are face to face with a risk where failure means death. ”

“ You are young; with all the weaknesses of youth strongly developed—rash, hotheaded, sometimes tipsy, a fool with women, and when, necessary, a knave too, loose in money matters and unscrupulous, a gambler, a dicer, and a bankrupt in morals, religion, and honour. But you are shrewd—for you've deceived everyone about your sword-skill and your courage—and under the garb of a worthless fellow you have a cool, calculating, and yet dare-devil head that should make your fortune. ”

“ I take you for a very resolute young man, with a great skill of fence, a large desire to push your fortunes high, and not too much scruple to act like a sword scabbard between your legs and trip you up. If you weren't that, you'd be no use to me. As you are, I open before you a career such as lies before no other man in the Emperor's wide dominions at the present moment. Do this, and you win a woman as rich and beautiful and, as women go, as good as any in Russia for a wife ”

“ I wished to know the relish of the reputation for cowardice, if you like. I have never been out before in Moscow, as you know; and have never had to shew what I could do with either sword or pistol. Nor did I seek this quarrel. But because I have never fought till I was compelled, that does not mean that I can't fight when I am compelled. But the truth's out now, and it may as well all be known. Come to my rooms for five minutes before breakfast—I am going to my sister's to breakfast—and I'll shew you what I can do with the pistols. ”

“ I sprang aside, whipped out my sword, sent up a lusty cry for help that made the houses ring again, and set my back against the wall to sell my life as dearly as I could. They closed round me and attacked instantly; a swift lunge sent my blade through one of them, a swinging cut made another drop his knife with a great cry of pain, and an unexpected, but tremendously violent back-handed blow with the hilt of my sword right in the face sent a third down reeling and half senseless. ”

“ I tore it from him and threw it with all my force over the embankment and then plunged my sword into the villain's heart.
I tore it from him.
The bomb exploded the instant it touched the ground below, and the effects were perfectly awesome. There was a prodigious roar; the earth reeled as if under a heavy blow, and a number of the soldiers were thrown to the ground; the train seemed to be shaken bodily: and before the reverberation of the explosion ceased, the splintering of wood and the crashing of glass, told of desperate injuries to some of the carriages. ”

“ Altogether a most remarkable looking man; and I was not astonished that Essaieff had been surprised when I said I had forgotten him. He was not a man to be forgotten. The expression of his face was sardonic and saturnine, and his manners and gestures were all saturated with intense self-assertiveness. He moved, looked, and spoke as though he felt that everyone was at once beneath him and afraid of him.
He was at the far end of the room when I entered, and I saw Devinsky stoop and whisper to him immediately he caught sight of me. ”

“ I told you at the start that my sister's hand was not mine to give; neither is it mine to sell, Major Devinsky."
He bent a sharp, calculating look on me as if to judge whether I was in earnest, or merely raising my terms.
"I am not a man easily baulked," he said.
"Nor I one easily bribed," I retorted.
"You will have a fortune, and more than a fortune behind you. With skill like yours you can climb to any height you please."
"Sink to any depth you please, you should say," I answered sternly. "But my sister declines absolutely to be your wife. ”

“ I looked to every chamber of my revolver. Each bullet might mean a life before the day was three hours older. Next, I looked to my sword. It was the same that had seen me through my trouble with Devinsky and I knew it as a man learns to know the feel of his walking stick. Lastly, I had a long deadly looking dagger; the sheath fastened to the right hip of my trousers where it could be drawn with the greatest ease. As a final reserve I had in a small secret pocket a couple of pills—poison enough to kill half a dozen men. ”

“ Lieutenant Petrovitch of ours, gentlemen, my particular friend, and as good a fellow as ever held a commission. You can do anything with him, except quarrel; then, damme, you must look out for yourself, for there isn't a man in Moscow, nor I believe in Russia, can get through his guard; and as for shooting, God! I believe if a single devil of a Turk shews only the shadow of an eyelash round the corner of a fortification, he'll hit him with a ricochet. 'That devil Alexis,' he is to us; and if the devil's only half as good a fellow as this, I'll be content for one to serve him. ”

“ I lured him cunningly to that part of the house where he was found, plunged the dagger into his breast, put into his pocket the forged warning of a Nihilist attack, opened the house at a point where a man could have entered, fastened to the dagger the Nihilist watchword, and then crept away to my own rooms."
"It was a hellish plot," I exclaimed, hotly.
"It was inspired by love for you, Alexis. It was truly 'For Freedom's sake.' Freedom that should unite us for ever."
"Do you think I could ever be anything to a woman whose hand is red with murder?" I cried, in indignant horror. ”

“ I must see my sister. I must save her—why man, are you lost to every sense of feeling? Take her away first—make her safe; and then I swear to Heaven, you or this man can do with me what you please."
The stolid stony impassiveness of the man's face crushed every hope out of me. I could have struck him in my baffled rage.
"I have twenty men in the troop here, Lieutenant My instructions are to take you at once to Moscow. I prefer to use no force; but I have it here, if necessary."
I wrung my hands in despair; and then with a wild dash I rushed to the door to try and find Olga for myself. ”

“ He is a swordsman worthy of your skill. He has insulted, and will again insult my sister, your betrothed—for what is not an insult when you wish to make it one?—and he would delight to meet you. He will think he can kill you. Perhaps he can: may be, probably; for he is a very devil with the weapon. That is your risk. Will you take it? It's no light one. But you are a young fellow with all to gain in winning and nothing to lose but your life. ”

“ I said, after a pause; and I told her about the arrest of Devinsky.
"These people strike swiftly and secretly, Alexis," she said, thoughtfully. "They frighten me. Their power is almost limitless. How hard they will hit and how far the blow will reach, if they ever find we are fooling them!" She sighed.
"The frontier is their limit: and we must pass it."
"I have been out to-day to make the preparations for flight. I suppose I must go?"—she smiled a sad little note of interrogation at me—"and if so, the sooner the better. I have a disguise, and shall start to-night. ”

“ I did look into them: and very beautiful eyes hers were. Little shining blue heavens all radiant with the light of infinite capacity to feel. Fascinating eyes, very. But I had not lived the first sixteen years of my life in Russia without getting to know that in that big land all is not snow that looks white; and that a very awkward intrigue may lurk beneath a very fair seeming surface.
"Madam, I am charmed, but I have not the honour of knowing you."
A passing cloud of irritation shewed and a little gesture of impatience, sufficient to remind me that the gloved hands were very small. ”

“ Time in which to meet this woman's horrible cunning and daring plot. If I had hated her before, she was now loathsome; while the fears she had stirred on Olga's account intensified and embittered a thousandfold my resentment. Yet hateful as the task was, I was prepared to continue my part with her.
"You think this love?" I said, after a pause in which she had been waiting breathlessly for me to speak. "Do women love the men they hold to them by the tether rope of threats?"
"Do women kill for the sake of men they do not love?" ”

“ But under the circumstances you will probably feel personally unwilling to leave Russia at such a juncture."
"I should feel myself a traitor," said I, grandiloquently; and in fact I did feel very much like one as I left him, rejoicing that I still breathed the fresh air of heaven instead of the foetid atmosphere of a gaol.
One thing was certain now—neither Olga nor I could hope to escape yet. Any attempt would be fatal. The murder of such a man would mean that the lurid search light of suspicion would fall in all directions, on the guilty and guiltless alike. ”

“ How do you mean?" asked Durescq stiffly.
"Those you mentioned in your first sentence. Whom else should I mean?" and I let my eye rest as if by accident on Devinsky.
"You have a singular manner of expressing yourself, Lieutenant."
"We provincials do not always copy the manners of the capital, you know," I returned in my pleasantest manner. "I think the provinces are growing more and more independent every year. We arrange our own affairs in our own way, have our own etiquette, form our own associations, and settle our own quarrels without aid from the capital." ”

“ I retorted.
"You are certainly a most unusual brother, I can tell you," she said, smiling slily.
"If every brother had such a sister, the tie that binds us two would be a much more usual one," I answered.
"You are incorrigible," she laughed and turned away.
"I am glad you speak so seriously, Alexis," said my aunt. "I'll be no party to any deception. She does love you, boy, however much she may try to hide it when you are here;" and with this, which set us both laughing again, the old lady went away.
"Does she?" I asked; and the question brought Olga with a happy look into my arms. ”

“ I was caught like a rat in a trap, and unless I could beat off the men who were thus attacking me at such dangerous odds, I was as good as a dead man.
I whipped out my sword and pushed Olga back into the room we had left, just in time to parry the first wild lunges Devinsky made at me; and at the first touch of the steel all my coolness came to me.
Everything must turn on the first minute or two; and knowing my man I set all my skill to work to keep him so engaged as to hamper the attempts of the other two to get to close quarters with me. ”

“ The news that I had beaten Devinsky, had played with him like a cat with a bird, spread like a forest fire. Essaieff was right enough in his forecast that everyone would be delighted at the major's overthrow. But the notoriety which the achievement brought me was not at all unlikely to prove a source of embarrassment.
I should be a marked man, and everything I did would be sure to be closely observed. Any gross blunder made in my new character would be the more certainly seen, and would thus be all the more likely to lead to my discovery. ”

“ You want me one day to get this man assassinated because you say you know he can run you through the body just as he pleases, and you promise me the friendship of your sister if I will do it; and yet the very next, you go out and meet him and he has not a chance with you. But why did you do it? I have heard of it all. Did you want to try me?"
I thanked her mentally for that cue.
"At all events two things are clear now," I said. "I did not want to get out of Moscow for fear of Devinsky, and you would not do that which I told you could alone save my life. ”

“ I hated the woman.
"You have no clue yet, I suppose?"
"Yes, I have a clue," she replied, with a laugh that sounded like a threat. "I can put my hand on the murderer when I will—and I will, if he proves a traitor."
"You are in a dramatic mood," I answered. "Who is the man? Why not denounce him? Surely this act is what you must call treachery."
"There was a Nihilist plot to kill the man," she said, speaking with contemptuous flippancy of accent of the dead. ”

“ She brushed them aside with abrupt contempt, and when I tried to find out indirectly what her proof was, she laughed angrily and would not tell me.
"I will tell you when I bid you good-bye for Siberia, or see you for the last time in the condemned cell. You shall not die in ignorance," she said: and then she went on to dwell with horrible detail upon the punishments that were in store for both Olga and myself.
But she overdid it all; and shewed me her weak point. She thus gave me a clue to my best tactics. Her feeling was not hate of me, but jealousy of Olga. ”