Chapter IV: Lover and Judge

The red book with the plan of the southern channel had tumbled to the floor when Marian started up from the table. Paul replaced it upon the bookshelf before he spoke to her. She thought the act deliberate to the point of cruelty, but she saw that the hand which held the volume trembled, and she knew then that the man feared for her greatly with a fear such as her own.

“Paul,” she cried, finding her tongue after many minutes, “what are you doing? Why do you not speak to me?”

He turned swiftly to show her a face stern and angry.

“I am putting away the map which interested you, mademoiselle; it is ten years old and could be of no use to you. There are others, but we do not leave them about for the amusement of everyone. They are locked up in the safe, and I have no false keys, mademoiselle.”

The mocking tone was as a blow to her. Chagrin at her own folly, the certainty that the secret of her life was a secret no more, brought tears to her eyes. This, she said, was the end of it all, of her dream and of her liberty. To-morrow--she dare not think of to-morrow. When she feigned to laugh, the laugh was hard and forced and must struggle for mastery with a sob.

“Oh,” she said, and every word cost her an effort, “you think that I care whether your map is new or old. What an idea, Captain Paul! Why do you not say that I came in here to read the General’s letters?”

Paul, who had put away the book and possessed himself of the pencil with which she had begun to draw, faced her for a moment and gave her a look which withered her smile and silenced her excuse.

“Do not lie to me,” he said; “God knows, there is enough without that. You will not laugh to-morrow when the whip cuts your shoulders and the prison blinds you. Fool! fool! Who but a woman would commit a folly like this?”

She did not speak when he charged her, but leaned back against the wall as though in defiance of his anger. Her clever mind had begun to be busy again, and she reproached herself that she should cut so sorry a figure; but he did not permit her to speak. A door shutting in the hall brought an exclamation to his lips.

“Hark!” he said, “there is Ivan Grigarovitch. If he should find you here--my God!”

He switched off the electric light and dragged her from the room, back to her own apartment. She did not resist him, but went with a mind unconscious of her surroundings. Yesterday seemed far off; the thread of her life had snapped, as it were, at the moment of the discovery; she hoped nothing, could realise nothing; she thought that she passed through some valley of her dreams, but would never pass out of it again. When he had shut the door of her own room she dropped into an arm-chair and sat staring vaguely at the red embers in the stove. She tried to think that she had awakened from her sleep; the voice of the man was as a distant sound coming to her across the sea.

“Mademoiselle,” he said, crossing over to her and standing at her side, “before I tell them what I have seen to-night, as my duty and my honour compel me to do, I would ask you if you have anything to say to me?”

She continued to look into the fire, a smile hovering upon her face.

“What should I say to you?” she asked, with a shrug of her shoulders. “Is it so great an offence in Russia to look at a book which does not belong to you?”

“It is an offence,” he answered quietly, “for which men and women are now dying in the dungeons of the fortresses or at the labour in the mines; it is an offence for which we have lashed many a man to death in the courtyard before this house; it is the one crime which Russia neither forgets nor forgives. Great God, that it should be you--you who sent the plan to London, you who brought this trouble upon us all! I cannot believe it, Marian, I cannot believe the things I have seen with my own eyes.”

Again she had no answer for him, but the laugh left her face and she clasped her hands together across her knee.

“You do not understand,” she said after a while; “you will never understand.”

She was telling herself, secretly, that this trance of the mind which held her tongue-tied and impotent was not to be explained. She knew that if anyone but her lover had found her in the cabinet of Nikolai Stefanovitch, she could have played her part to perfection; aping the ingenuousness and the surprise which had been able hitherto to shield her from suspicion. But she was dumb before Paul. A great shame of her employment came upon her. She did not fear its consequences yet, for she did not wholly realise them; but the thought that her lover knew of it paralysed her understanding. He, meanwhile, paced the room in an agony of uncertainty and of distress.

“You say that I do not understand,” he exclaimed in anger at her silence; “not understand, when I find you with the map in your hands and your pencil busy! Not understand! Am I a child, then? Shall I tell myself after this that it was someone else, and not you, who sent the plan to London? Shall I look for another spy in Kronstadt? Pshaw! that I should waste words when every minute is precious.”

“You need look for no one, Paul,” she said, rising and facing him as the resolve took her; “I alone did what you say. No one helped me. I drew the map and sent it to London. I am the spy, if that is the word. I do not ask you to pity me nor to think of me; I am not worthy of your help, God knows. I can stand alone in the future as I have done in the past. You say that your duty compels you to tell them of what you have seen. Very well, tell them now, and I will wait until they come for me. I am not afraid; why should you be afraid for me?”

She had gathered up her courage and stood before him with blazing eyes and flushed cheeks. He said that he had never seen so beautiful a creature, and her spirit won him to a sudden remembrance of his love.

“Why am I afraid for you, Marian? Can you ask that? Would not I give my life for you? Is not your hurt my hurt? Oh, you know that it is. If they take you from me, they take all that I have in the world. Why could you not trust me? You have done this thing for money; why could you not have told me of you trouble?”

“To beg of you?” she cried, with scorn in her voice.

“Certainly, if by begging you might have saved yourself this dishonour.”

“It is no dishonour to buy bread that a child may eat. That is my crime; I am ready to suffer for it.”

He stared at her in astonishment.

“It is my turn to say that I do not understand,” he cried, “and I must understand, I must know all, Marian I may yet be your friend if you will be frank with me. But to do that you must hold nothing from me, you must speak to me as you would speak to your own brother.”

“I will hold nothing from you, Paul--there is nothing to hold. I sent the letters to London because they offered me money for them, and I am very poor, and there is a child in England who is dependent upon me. God help him!”

She sank upon her sofa sobbing, for a memory of little Dick brought her back to reality. But Paul’s arms were about her in a moment, and he held her to him and forgot that he was her judge.

“They shall not hurt you, little one,” he said; “if you will only trust me, I may yet see a way. Have I not loved you too well to wish to see you harmed? Be frank with me, then, that I may know how to serve you. You say that there is a child in England?”

She looked at him gratefully through her tears. A photograph stood upon the easel near her. She took it up and put it into his hand.

“It is my brother Dick,” she said; “that is his picture. He and I were left to face the world together three years ago. He will be six next year. It was for his sake I came here. I have no other relative in the world but my cousin Walter, who is at the Admiralty in London.”

“Then he it was who asked you to commit this crime?”

“He told me that the English Government would pay ten thousand pounds to anyone who could secure the plans of the unknown forts here. Then he sent the book which was written about Vladivostok, and the way the English got the maps of that. I asked myself why a woman could not do what a man had done. It was nothing to you that your plans should be known. You say always that Kronstadt is strong enough to defy the world. If that is so, what have you to fear from anyone? And it meant so much to me--a home for myself and the child, and exile no more. Cannot you understand now, Paul?”

He kissed her upon the forehead.

“I understand,” he said. “God help us both!”

Her courage appealed to him, for she was quite calm now, saying to herself that for the child’s sake she would do again what she had done. And her mind was already occupied with a multitude of ideas, but chiefly with the idea that her lover would save her.

“Paul,” she said suddenly, “if you understand, are you not my friend again?”

He began to pace the room again, his spurs clanking over the bare floor and his long cloak hanging loose from his shoulders. A voice of conscience whispered to him that he was one of the children of Kronstadt and must not betray her. The kiss of the girl was still warm upon his lips as a kiss of mercy. But even in the crisis a memory of smaller things intruded, and he spoke of them.

“Mon Dieu!” he said, “what an actress you are, Marian! I remember the day I took you to the battery and showed you the breech of a gun. You asked me if a shell was a torpedo, and how we measured the ten-inch Armstrong, which seemed to you three yards long. You remember that, do you not? How you ran about from rampart to rampart like a schoolgirl. If I had known!”

She laughed, forgetting all that had gone before.

“But you did not know,” she said; “and I measured the mole by pacing it while you were making tea. I can see you now, scalding your fingers with the kettle and saying that it was an honour. I wrote down the number of the guns when old Seroff the sergeant went to look for bread. He told me how deep the channel was, and repeated it over and over again because I was so stupid. You were all so kind to me!”

The love of jest was not conquered even by this, the tragedy of her life. She laughed with the laugh of a child at the remembrance of the comedy she had played upon the ramparts; and Paul laughed with her, content that she and no other had acted for him.

“Oh!” said he. “You have the cunning of the devil! If it had begun and ended in this; but now--now when we have to-morrow to face, I cannot laugh long when I think of that, Marian. How shall I help you? How shall I do my duty? How shall I forget that I love you? Why, to-morrow, holy God! they may send you to the fortress, and I may never look upon your face again!”

He stopped abruptly in his walk, but she, standing by the chimney, looked into the ashes of the stove as though still seeking dream pictures there.

“They will do that if you tell them,” she said.

“And I must tell them; I have no other course. My honour compels me. I would give half the years of my life to get you out of Kronstadt to-night, Marian; to-morrow it will be too late. I must tell them then. I cannot delay--you know that I cannot.”

The words cost him an effort, and when he had spoken them he came and took both her hands in his and looked into her eyes.

“My love! my love!” he said, “how shall I help you? How shall I save you from this folly? Swear to me that you will do nothing more--that you will never write another line to England while you are in this house.”

“I must write to little Dick,” she said petulantly.

He stamped on the floor impatiently.

“Promise--give me the promise!” he cried.

“I promise,” she answered, clinging to him with a pitiful appeal; “oh, I promise all. I will do anything if I may see the child again! You will not tell them, Paul? Oh, for God’s sake pity me--listen to me!”

“I must tell them,” he answered doggedly--“I must, I must!”

He pushed her from him, for there was a sound of voices in the corridor, and he reeled rather than walked from the room. But she stood trembling and still, and she counted his footsteps as he crossed the snow-clad courtyard.