Chapter I: The Masquerade Upon the Ice

Though the great bell of Kronstadt had struck the hour of nine and the bugles had called “lights out” in the barracks of the town, there was no perceptible curb upon the merriment of those who kept the carnival of the sea. For Kronstadt was ice-bound, and the New Year, bringing an end to the stress and storm of the earlier winter, had sealed the waves with the seal of the welcome frost. Where ships sailed a month ago, the merry skaters now ventured. Far out from the great citadel the gulf was still and frozen. No longer was the call of the pilot heard or the voice of the seaman crying to his men. The whirr of skate and sledge, the music of artillery bands, the prattle of pretty women, had taken their place. But here and there vast fires blazing upon the ice drew the busy throngs to the door of tent or wooden theatre. The light of many torches made golden rings upon the fields of glistening snow. Old and young, generals and ensigns, rothmisters and feldwebels, hurried to the joy of the whirling life. As prisoners from the cells of solitude and silence they rushed from their island home to the sea, which frost had stilled and the ice made war upon.

Conspicuous upon the field of the frozen sea, for it was built in the ring of light shed by the beacons of Menzikoff, stood the palace of ice, which the officers of the garrison had set up as the monument of a winter so generous. Ready hands had hewn blocks from the shallower waters of the military harbour; stout arms had dragged the glistening boulders and piled them up for the foundations of the temple of the frost. Soon a vast building arose, a tabernacle of shimmering and transparent whiteness, into which cunning engineers carried wires for the electric light, while zealous corporals brought the flaming eagles of their regiments, and laughing girls bedecked the temple with draperies of silk and satin. The enduring frost looked upon the work and found it to be good. A keener breath of winter breathed strength upon the palace and made it a perfect whole. Its builders spoke of masquerade and carnival. Generals shook their heads but did not refuse. The 29th of January in the year 1895 brought the proposal to maturity, and all social Kronstadt came out that night to offer the incense of laughter at the shrine. Old and young, poor and rich hastened to enjoy an opportunity so rare.

While the palace within shone with countless lights, which gave a glittering radiance to the uniforms of gold and white and green, the dark field of the ice without was vantage ground for the townspeople and sailors weary of waiting for an open sea. Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Swedes, but English outnumbering all, they stood shivering in the icy blast, or warming themselves at the great fires, or roaring with laughter at the jests and the antics of the masqueraders. For them the sup of vodki must suffice; no frothing champagne, no warmth of fur or dance, no occupation of looking love gave them armour against the cold. But they were critics always, and being critics, they spoke their minds and were not afraid. Half an hour had not passed before they had a name for every prominent person in the palace. The fat general perspiring in an effort of agility, the gorgeous cuirassiers of the Guard in their dazzling uniforms of white and blue--“flour mills,” the English sailors called them, and qualified the noun; the mincing cornets of cavalry; the three-starred colonels of artillery groping for the honours of the clown--as each made the tour of the frozen ballroom and came to clearer view of the uninvited, his new name was roared lustily by the volleyed voices of the seamen.

“Higher up, spangled shanks--lift ’em up!” bawled the bullet-headed skipper of a trading steamer as an exceedingly stout lady came shuffling into view. “There ain’t no bally ’oop in Roosher as you’re a-going to jump through, marm.”

“Leave the lady be, Bill,” retorted his mate. “’Tain’t often as you see a fine growed thing like that--at her age too! You ain’t got no manners. If she weighs more than twenty stun, I’m a nigger!”

“She shall pose for Venus!” said a merry little Frenchman; but a German protested--

“Blitzen! it is her harvest time. In ze summer der zun will melt her down!”

“Why, here’s little ‘Sixpence-a-box,’” chimed in a burly engineer as a mannikin in the green uniform of an artillery officer came prancing by. “‘Sixpence-a-box’ along with the ‘Tower of Babel’!”

“He’ll want a ladder to hail her, I guess!” cried an able seaman who surveyed the tall lady in question with the expression of one who could not take in the whole of her height and magnificence at a glance. “You’d have to take three reefs in that lot, Bill, before you could lay your course for ’Ampstead ’Eath on a Sunday!”

“Two to one St. Frusquin!” roared the purser of a small passenger steamer when a lank and lean _stabcapitaine_ came galloping round with feet lifted high as though he must crush the earth beneath him. “I’m damned if he don’t fancy he’s running for a cup.”

“I’ll be thinking he’s took with the spasms,” exclaimed the red and shaggy-haired mate of a Scotch trading vessel.

“Which shows your ignorance, Jack,” cried the engineer. “Don’t you know a valtz when you sees one? Look at him cuddling Miss ‘Fore-and-aft’! It don’t want a book to tell you that she likes it neither.”

“I hear as cuddling’s come in again with the quick valtz,” said the purser. “They’ve give up walking round one another like hands round a capstan now. Maybe the weather’s too cold.”

A few ejaculations of approval greeted the surmise, one of the most melancholy among the company hazarding the opinion that the infernal regions were already “froze up”; but thereafter the conversation began to dribble away and was almost run out when a shout from the Frenchman awoke all to attention, and a new buzz of talk was born of the passing of a dancer whose steps were followed with pleasure and approval by every eye in the group of the uninvited.

“La voici! la belle Anglaise! la voici! Comme elle sait danser la polka!”

“That’s her right enough,” exclaimed the bullet-headed skipper; “and ain’t she a beauty afore the wind. By gosh! I’d pay off with her myself, I’m damned if I wouldn’t! See how she goes about--and sudden too! It wants a head for that, mates, if so be as you’ve not been brought up to it.”

“She’s a daisy!” exclaimed the purser. “I told you so yesterday when she was out at Fort Paul with ‘Sixpence-a-box.’ Look at the way she carries her canvas! There’s style about that, mates, as anyone can see.”

“And look at the way her hair is wove! Oh, I tell you she’s a beauty!”

“If you lofe her, you lofe little,” said the German, nettled at the unanimity of the admiration.

“Little it is for me, by thunder!” cried the skipper. “I don’t want a wife, as I’ve got to walk round every morning to see if any of her is missing. Give me the English miss, and the devil take all fat Rooshians!”

The argument waxed hot, but _la belle Anglaise_ skated on unconscious of it. She was a brown-haired girl whose bright eyes and white skin had cheated Time so that he forgot the day of her birth, which was twenty-five years ago, and had come to believe her still in the teens. A slightly-built, fragile creature, whose face was ever changing and rarely carried the same expression; a creature of quick impulses and unresting gaiety, whose words cost her nothing, whose gesture was the gesture of a Frenchwoman. They called her “La Petite” in the fortress, where she had won much love and many friends--none more zealous than the deputy-governor, General Stefanovitch, who painted his eye-brows and wore stays. He had followed her like a dog this night of carnival, and she repaid him generously with many a word of compliment whispered into his willing ear and many a press upon a hand which, younger men said, should have been already paralysed. For they begrudged him _la belle Anglaise_. There was no man in all that company of glittering masqueraders who was not the happier for her word or the message of her eyes. And one, at least, there had given her the best offering an honest man can give--the offering of his love.

He skated with her now, and had earned already from an approving audience the name of the “Green-baize-tree.” A tall flaxen-haired man, for whose fine figure the neat uniform of the artillery betrayed close friendship, he had something of the manner of the more civilised West; and had learnt in Paris and London, as many of his brothers had not, the elements of those polite arts which win upon a woman’s favour. For the moment he applied such arts to the purpose of pleasing his partner, _la belle Anglaise_; and it was plain to be seen that he had eyes only for her. In and out of the glittering throng they skated, a harmony of gold and green, and soft furs and azure stuffs lifting to the breeze like wings of gauze. But while the man looked ever into the girl’s face, she, in turn, was spellbound by the trance of sensuous music; and being carried from the world about her to a kingdom of her imagination, she forgot all else and abandoned herself to the exalting rhythm of the dance. Not until the last chord was a lingering harmony upon the air did she so much as remember that a man’s arm was close about her waist, or that his head was bent down toward her until his lips almost kissed her ear.

“You suffocate me,” she said, drawing back from his embrace and fanning herself vigorously. “Am I so very like a rifle, Captain Paul? Really, I thought you were going to present arms with me.”

The great artilleryman began to pull his moustache and to look foolish.

“I thought you might fall,” he stammered. “It is very slippery, Mademoiselle Marian. Besides, when I come to think of it, you are very like a rifle--your bullets wound and your eyes are bayonets!”

She took his arm and they walked with the others; the whole company being drawn by a subtle law of gravitation to the refreshment-room, where the corks popped, and silk petticoats rustled, and laughter struck many chords, and champagne frothed in silver goblets. The touch of her little gloved hand was like the caress of a rose; she seemed so slight and fair and fragile that he had the impulse to crush her in his strong arms and make her a part of his being.

“You repent?” he asked her in a low voice, while he handed her a cup of boiling tea.

“I?--of what?”

“Of many things--of all the dances you have not given me!”

She laughed lightly, and turned to hear the complaints of an ensign who wished to tell her that she had promised him the next dance; but had not the courage to do anything but devour her with his eyes. When she had sent the boy away, and had drunk her tea, she answered her companion.

“Repentance is a virtue,” she said, “but to repent you must sin. The moral is obvious. I am going to dance with the ensign, and remember the time when I was fifteen, and wrote my own romances. Have you ever made heroes of your boy friends, Captain Paul? Oh, the bitterness of it, when the divinity of your youth goes through the bankruptcy court, or a judge reads his ‘Ode to the Chorus Girl,’ with emphasis. But of course you don’t understand--how should you? It is only in England that a man--a certain sort of man--writes poetry because he is in love. You will come to that state of civilisation by-and-bye. Meanwhile you are barbarians, and would be impossible if you could not dance so beautifully upon skates. When I leave you I shall write a book dividing you into two heads----”

Captain Paul, who understood little beyond the fact that she was to dance with the ensign, interrupted her with a laugh which rang out like the note of a bell.

“Into two heads? Moi! ça, c’est bien! I shall have four eyes to watch you while you dance. After that there are no more numbers. It is one long waltz and I am your partner, hein?”

He twirled his moustache fiercely, seeming to watch every movement of her eyes or hand; but when she was about to answer him, a voice at her elbow jarred upon their privacy and stilled her laughter. It was the voice of Mademoiselle Varia, the General’s daughter--the eldest of the two children whom _la belle Anglaise_ had come to Russia to teach--and at her side stood her yellow-haired sister Rina.

“Ma’mselle, it is time to walk abroad.”

“Ma’mselle, eleven does beat upon the clock.”

Sixteen years and fifteen were the ages of the children, but their English was not yet six months old and was unweaned from the jargon of polyglot phrase inseparable from civilised Russian speech. They stood now like two waxen figures beside their governess, whose art was incapable of disguising the coldness of her welcome or her little love for their company. She answered shortly and almost with irritation, suffering Captain Paul to lead her back to the great ballroom; but thither the intruders followed, and were not to be put off.

“Ma’mselle, veux-tu partir?”

“Ma’mselle, nous sommes parfaitement prêtes.”

Mademoiselle looked over her shoulder and said, “In a moment, children.” Then she made a doleful grimace.

“I had forgotten ‘the Dolls,’” she said. “Does not it speak well for your dance that I should forget them?”

“But you are not going?”

“Indeed and I am. Eleven o’clock is my curfew to-night. I am like the little criminal who turned from his dark deed when he remembered that the clock used to strike eleven in his mother’s house. You haven’t read Dickens, equally of course.”

Captain Paul made a gesture of impatience. “Why do you torture me? why do you not ask me to walk with you?” he asked eagerly; “you know that I am ready.”

“Who am I to say to you, ‘Walk,’ and you will walk. Besides, you have partners.”

“Partners--I--partners when you are in the room! To the devil----!”

He stopped abruptly, biting his moustache and rocking upon his heels. But she turned from him with a gesture of one inexpressibly shocked, and ran to the room where thicker furs awaited her, and old Ivan with the lantern, and “the Dolls,” who still held each other’s hand and seemed to say, “We are the good children from the fairy book.” She was not at all surprised when, presently, she found him waiting for her at the door of the palace; nor did she protest as he expected.

“I am forgiven?” he asked.

“I will tell you to-morrow?” she said.

“You are glad it is not the General who walks with you?”

“Gladness is a large emotion. Say that I am content.”

“Only content?”

“Why ‘only’? Is content so common an experience?”

The man sighed, but pressed the arm which he held, and drew her closer to him. They had crossed the ice which lay between the harbour and the temple of the carnival, and had entered the town of barrack and rampart and bastion. Though Kronstadt slept, her robe of war was still upon her; the shadows upon her pavements were the shadows of her mighty guns; the tramp of sentries, the sign and countersign, were her music. Marian Best never entered that citadel of steel and granite without a little shudder of indefinable fear. Captain Paul felt the tremor upon her arm now, and it helped to an anxious sympathy.

“You are cold,” he said; “then wait a moment and I will wrap you in my cloak.”

“And leave yourself a target for the east wind? No, I am not cold, but I fear the shadows!”

“They fall upon us both,” said the man; “we share them as we shared the bright lights just now. Would that we might share them always, Mademoiselle Marian, the light and the dark, the sorrow and the joy!”

The girl tossed her pretty curls from her forehead and laughed up at him.

“Is it not too cold to talk nonsense?” she asked. “I thought poets waited for the spring.”

He took advantage of her words, for the lantern-bearer appeared now like a star upon the road before them, and “the Dolls” were hand in hand at old Ivan’s heels.

“But I cannot wait,” he said earnestly, while he felt for her fingers and tried to lock his own in them. “It is always spring when you are at my side; it is always winter when the night takes you away from me. Why do I read your English books all day? Is it not that I may find words to speak to you? But I have no words--I have nothing but myself, myself and my poverty, and my love for you. Some day, perhaps, it will be different. Some day I shall be able to come to you and to say, ‘I am no longer Paul Zassulic, of the Artillery, but Paul of Tolma, the master of many and the servant of none but the Czar.’ I dare not think that such a day is near--the gifts of life come too often in the autumn of our years. But I shall be rich always while I possess my love for you, Marian; you cannot rob me of that; you cannot make me love you less; there is no one in the world who can take my riches from me!”

They had come up in their walk to the curtain of the bastion which defended General Stefanovitch’s house, and therefrom could look down upon the town, now darkened, yet showing in the moon’s rays a forest of spires and turrets and the gloomy shapes of fort and barracks. Away upon the ice a great blaze of light, focussed by the translucent walls of the palace, marked the scene of carnival. Faint strains of music, the note of horns, and the rolling of drums, came up to them for a memory of their dance and of their pleasure. Some instinct held them to the place, and they stood together with quickening hearts and muted lips, the man trembling with a strange excitement, the girl dumb because the word she had long awaited was now spoken. It was no secret to her that Paul Zassulic loved her; it was no reproach to her, she thought, that she had no answer for him. While she had been content in his friendship and devotion, her busy life had forbidden that she should reckon with herself or examine her own heart to see if any treasure of an answering love were locked therein. She was dumb because no certainty of self came to assist her; she would not wound, yet knew not if she could heal. A great seriousness possessed her, a realisation that such moments were supreme in every life. She had few friends in all the world. The thought that this friend might be taken from her was bitter.

“Paul,” she said, when a sudden movement of his snapped the seal upon her lips, “Paul, what shall I say to you--you who have been my friend, who will be my friend always? Shall I tell you that I have done wrong to listen to you? No, indeed, for I owe you that--I owe you more than I can ever repay, a thousand times. Perhaps I am not like other women. When I ask myself if I love, I cannot answer--I do not know what love is. I am happy because you are my friend. I welcome the days which bring you to me. But a wife should be able to say more than that. Some day, perhaps, I shall know all. When that day comes I will not fear to speak. I will answer as you wish. I will tell you that I have learned to love you.”

It was not the answer that he wished; but the word that he might ever count himself her friend, and that she was happy when he was with her, made his pulse leap, and he drew her towards him again, kissing her upon the forehead many times and refusing to release her from his strong embrace.

“God bless you, little Marian! God bless you for the promise!” he said.

“It was only a promise, Paul,” she answered. “I cannot give you more--I cannot lie to you, or how should I be worthy of your friendship?”

“There is no woman more worthy in all the world!”

A voice from the ramparts brought them to a recollection of the hour and the place. It was the voice of old Ivan, who wished to close the gate of the enceinte, and at his call Marian broke swiftly from her lover’s embrace and entered the fortress. But Captain Paul stood long watching the lights in the Governor’s house. When he turned to go down to the barracks he saw that carnival was done and the great palace in darkness.

“It is night now,” he said to himself, “but to-morrow the sun will shine and I shall see her! She is to go with me to the batteries. I shall show her everything, and that will take a long time. God bless the little woman I love!”

But Marian herself knelt by her bed, and heavy tears gathered in her eyes.

“If he knew!” she cried bitterly, “if he knew!”