Ironside

“ For two long hours the battle rages. Chads does well but he cannot do the impossible. Finally the Java must give in. Here is a fight in which there is honor enough for all, vanquished as well as victor. And Bainbridge, after such buffets of fate as few have received, at last has won his well-deserved victory. A third British frigate had been taken.
When “Old Ironsides” reached Boston a great reception awaited the commodore. There he marched through the streets, arm in arm with Rodgers and Hull—three commodores of whom any country might be proud. ”

“ Why have you not the new password, Excellency?”
“I have but now come hither from England at the peril of my life, and as yet I have met none whom I knew as one of us,” I answered evasively. “What is this new word? It is necessary that I should learn it,” I added, as he hesitated.
“I will tell you its meaning only,” he answered, watching me closely. “It means ‘in life and in death,’—but those are not the words.”
“Then I know them: à la vie et à la mort; is it not so?” I asked, remembering the moment he spoke the names by which Anne was known to others besides members of the League ”

“ EDRIC, or Eadric, STREONA (d. 1017) , ealdorman of the Mercians, was a man of ignoble birth who was advanced to high dignity through the favour of the English king Æthelred II. In 1007 he became ealdorman of the Mercians, and subsequently married Æthelred’s daughter Eadgyth. In the struggle between the English and the Danes he appears in the character of an arch-traitor. When Æthelred in 1009 proposed a great attack on the Danes, Edric dissuaded him from carrying it into effect. Again, on the invasion of England by Canute in 1015 Edric deserted Edmund Ironside and joined him. ”

“ We swung up our weapons, but before the rush could reach us, there was a crash close at hand; the door through which Anne and her guards had entered the chapel was thrown open, and a big man dashed in,—Loris [Pg 138] himself, still in his disguise. So he had reached us at last!
He must have grasped the situation at a glance, for he shouted: “Back; back for your lives! By the other door. We are betrayed; the soldiers are here. They are coming this way. Save yourselves!” ”

“ Therefore they said, "If we be quiet in our trenches in Edinburgh here, and if all the farmers come into the town and desert the country, the Ironsides will be driven out by iron hunger and be forced to go away." ”

“ I felt a twitch on my sleeve, and Mishka muttered in my ear.
“Count our men in and then see the gate barred. We shall be safer so. I will look after Yossof, and find also what food is in the house for us all. We need it sorely!”
So I sat in my saddle beside the gateway, waiting till the last of our laggards had come in. I saw Loris lift Anne from her horse and support her up the short flight of wide stone steps that led up to the house.
An elderly peasant woman hurried out to meet them, and behind her appeared a weird unearthly figure; a tall woman, wearing a kind of loose white dressing-gown. ”

“ At a little distance, perhaps, would be a small chapel with the priest’s house adjacent, and the somewhat more commodious houses of the tax-gatherer and starosta—the head man of the village, when he happened to be a farmer. Sometimes he was a kalak keeper, scarce one degree superior to his fellows. One could tell the tax-gatherer’s house a mile away by its prosperous appearance, and the kind of courtyard round it, closed in with a solid breast-high log fence; for in these days the hated official may at any moment find his house besieged by a mob of vodka-maddened moujiks and implacable women. ”

“ You say you care for her and not for the League. That is impossible, for she is its life; her life is bound up in it; she would wish your service for it,—never for herself! This I will do. If she does not hear otherwise that you are at Zostrov, as you will be to-morrow—though it is unlikely that she will not have heard already—I will see that she has word. That is all I can do.”
“That must serve. You will not even say if she is near at hand?”
“Who knows? She comes and goes. One day she is at Warsaw; the next at Wilna ”

“ You will doubtless have news of her at Zostrov.”
“How do you know I am going there?”
[Pg 234]
“Does not all the countryside know that a foreigner rides with Mishka Pavloff? God be with you, Excellency.”
He made one of his quaint genuflexions and backed rapidly to the door.
“Here, stop!” I commanded, striding after him. “There is more,—much more to say. Why did you not keep your promise and return to me in London? What do you know of Selinski’s murder? Speak, man; you have nothing to fear from me!” ”

“ It was food he wanted, but I had none to give him, except some crackers, and I had wasted enough time over him already. If I didn’t get a hustle on, I should be late for my appointment with Anne.
He clutched at the half-crown, and bent his trembling old body again, invoking, as I opined, a string of [Pg 6] blessings on my unworthy head. Something slipped from among his garments and fell with a tinkle at my feet. I stooped to pick it up and saw it was an oval piece of tin, in shape and size like an old-fashioned miniature, containing a portrait. ”

“ I gather my little band as I go,” he continued, speaking, like a true son of the saddle, in an even, deliberate voice that sounded distinct over the monotonous thud of the horses’ hoofs. “Yossof has carried word, and the first recruits await us outside the village yonder. They are all picked men, members of the League; some have served in the army, and—”
From far in our rear came a dull, sinister roar, followed by a kind of vibration of the ground under our feet, like a slight shock of earthquake.
“My God, how they hate me!” I heard Loris say softly. ”

“ I was thrown in on top of them, and we started off at a lumbering gallop, the guard of soldiers increasing in numbers as those who had followed on foot through the wood mounted and overtook [Pg 148] us. I saw Mirakoff pass and ride on ahead; he did not even glance in my direction. More than once we had to stop to pick up a dead or dying man, one of the batch of prisoners who had been forced to “run by the stirrup,” with their hands tied behind them, and a strap passed round their waist, attaching them to the stirrup of the horse, which its rider urges to full speed,—that is part of the fun. ”

“ I pushed on rapidly. The track, though narrow, was good enough, and I only had to flash my torch occasionally. I was afraid of the battery giving out, which, as a fact, it did before I emerged in the clearing Mishka had mentioned. But the light was better now, for the storm had passed; and in this northern latitude there is no real night in summer, only “the daylight sick,” as Von Eckhardt would say. Out in the clearing I could see quite a distance. The air felt fresh and pleasant and the patch of sky overhead was an exquisite topaz tint. ”

“ But I’ll show you her portrait.”
She gave a little cry of astonishment as I handed her the miniature; the diamond setting flashed under the softly shaded electric light.
“Oh, how lovely! But—why, she’s far more [Pg 342] beautiful than I am, or ever shall be! Did she give you this, Maurice?”
There was a queer note in her voice as she put the question; it sounded almost like a touch of jealousy.
“No; her husband gave it to me,—after she died,” I said sadly.
“Her husband! She was married, then. Who was he?”
“A man worthy of her; but I’d rather not talk about them,—not just at present ”

“ Now for Grace—his own, his beloved! He went up in the lift, and tapped softly at the bedroom door. It opened instantly, and there she stood, fresh and fair, in a simple evening gown of some filmy grey stuff, a shy smile on her dear lips.
“Oh, what a tired and grubby boy!” she laughed. “He wants his dinner very badly, he does, and I b’lieve I do too! As the king and queen are travelling without attendants on this interesting occasion, the queen (that’s me) has laid out your things, sir—your majesty, I mean—and quite correctly I’m sure. I’ve done it so often for daddy. ”

“ Yet it is through him that she has fallen under suspicion; for the League will not believe that he is sincere; they will trust no aristocrat.”
He babbled on, but I scarcely heeded him. I was beginning to pierce the veil of mystery, or I thought I was; and I no longer condemned Anne Pendennis, as, in my heart, I had condemned her, only an hour back. The web of intrigue and deceit that enshrouded her was not of her spinning; it was fashioned on the tragic loom of Fate.
She loved this Loris, and he loved her? So be it! ”

“ We will be friends, real friends, won’t we?”
When she arrived home, still musing over this strange, almost incredible, episode, Grace found Miss Culpepper—also playing “patience”—with a cheerful fire, a dainty little supper, and a loving welcome.
“What a long day you’ve had, my dear. You must be worn out,” she said, fluttering round and helping her remove her wrap.
“Yes, it has been long, but very interesting. And how have you got on? Did Mr. Thomson come to tea?”
“Y-e-s—oh, yes, though he didn’t stay very long. Sir Robert is not so well, and he was anxious to return. ”

“ We had our revolvers ready, but no one molested us, and as we made our way towards the synagogue, Loris more than once repeated his commands to the idle soldiers, with the same success.
Barzinsky’s inn, where Mishka and I had slept less than a fortnight back, was utterly wrecked, though the fire had not yet reached it, and in a heap in the roadway was the corpse of a woman, clad in a dirty bedgown. Her wig was gone and her skull battered in, but I [Pg 264] knew it was the placid, capable, good-tempered landlady herself. ”

“ The wet street gleamed silver in the moonlight, and was all but deserted. The [Pg 30] traffic had thinned down to an occasional hansom or private carriage, and there were few foot-passengers abroad. I did not meet a soul along the whole of Whitehall except the policemen, their wet mackintoshes glistening in the moonlight.
But, as I reached the corner of Parliament Square, I saw, just across the road, a man and woman walking rapidly in the direction of Westminster Bridge. ”

“ She did not imagine that he had ever seen her before, and that his interest in her was deeper and more complex than that which an exceptionally pretty girl inspires in most men, young or old.
When she stole another glance at him he was no [Pg 154] longer looking in her direction, but was listening with frigid courtesy to a fair-haired woman in a seal coat and expensive hat, who had just come in with a tall, thin, grey-haired man, and was looking up coquettishly into Austin’s glum face, as she spoke in a rapid undertone.
“Who is that?” demanded Maddelena.
“Mrs. Armitage and her husband—Mrs. ”

“ On Christmas morning Grace Carling knelt before the altar in Westminster Abbey, where, as usual at this early service, there were but a few worshippers.
Through the vast, dim spaces above, beyond the radiance of the lighted chancel, the soft coo of the pigeons outside was distinctly audible above the low tones of the ministrant priest. Of other sounds there were none; the very spirit of peace seemed to brood over the glorious old place, the spiritual heart of England to-day as through so many long, long centuries. ”

“ I felt angry with the Levinska woman for her taunt. She, and such as she, who were like so many undisciplined children, and whose ideas of revolution were practically limited to acts of violence committed in defiance or reprisal, could not even begin to understand the ideals not merely held, but maintained, by Anne and Loris, and the few others who, with them, knew that permanent good could never be accomplished by evil means. ”

“ Yes, Russia was a hell upon earth; and Petersburg was the centre and epitome of it, I said in my soul, as I loitered on one of the bridges that afternoon, and looked on the swift flowing river, on the splendid buildings, gleaming white, as the gilded cupolas and spires of the churches gleamed fire red, under the brilliant sunshine. A fair city outwardly, a whited sepulchre raised over a charnel-house. A city of terror, wherein every man is an Ishmael, knowing—or suspecting—that every other man’s hand is against him. ”

“ I see a large building; many people are there: it is a Court of Justice. The beloved is apart from you, from all, in a place by himself; there is but one beside him—I think he is an officer of police. The light streams from you to him, it gives him strength and courage. ”

“ 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. ”

“ During these wonderful weeks I had been spellbound, as it were, by Anne’s beauty, her charm. When I was with her I could think only of her; and in the intervals,—well, I still thought of her, and was dejected or elated as she had been cruel or kind. To me her many caprices had seemed but the outcome of her youthful light-heartedness; of a certain naïve coquetry, that rendered her all the more dear and desirable; “a rosebud set about with little wilful thorns;” a girl who would not be easily wooed and won, and, therefore, a girl well worth winning. ”