Chapter VIII: After Forty Days

The iron hand of winter relaxed its grip upon Kronstadt when the last bitter winds of March had exhausted themselves. Gentle breezes followed upon the devastating gales; trees blossomed generously as the snow sank through the face of the land, and the grass lifted its head again. No longer was the sea imprisoned nor the ships that had wintered in the merchants’ harbour. Marian, awake through long nights in her cell at Fort Alexander, could hear the waves gambolling in their new-found freedom or surging heavily against the granite walls with which the vast fort opposed them. There were even days when a kindly ray of sunlight came down through the barred windows and shone upon the icon set up in the corner of the dungeon. Marian welcomed these days, though her welcome was not without a certain pathos. She remembered that it was spring-time in Devonshire and that the child was alone. An intense longing for the freedom of the lanes and the perfume of the flowers possessed her. It was not that the intended discomforts of the cell galled her, for she was schooled now to privation and to suffering; she had made up her mind to pay the penalty which was the guerdon of her rashness. But the thought that she was never to hear little Dick’s voice again, that he was dependent now upon charity for the very food he ate, drove her almost to madness. She had been forty days in prison; she asked herself how it would be when days had become years.

Few visited her cell in those first hours of silence. They had sent a woman from the Governor’s house to wait upon her, and she had seen the Sergeant once or twice, though he had never spoken to her. But old Bonzo came nearly every day and brought always the same promise.

“Tell us the truth, mademoiselle,” he would say, “and it will be well with you. There is a room in Fort Katherine where you can see the sun and watch the ships upon the sea. You shall go there when you are sensible. But first we must know the names of those who helped you--your friends in Kronstadt, your friends in London. You cannot save them by silence. We shall catch them sooner or later; we shall know how to reward you when you help us in the attempt.”

“I have no friends,” she would answer. “I have told you the truth. I was poor, and they tempted me. I can tell you nothing more.”

Bonzo would lose his temper at this, and threaten her, but her courage remained unbroken.

“You shall have the whip, and we will see what you can tell us then,” he would cry. “Do you think to defy us, mademoiselle? Sapristi! I could crush you with my fingers.”

“They are large enough, monsieur,” she said simply.

Bonzo would leave the cell and slam the door after such a scene. He had hesitated until this time to carry out any of the threats he uttered so glibly. He did not forget that Marian Best was an Englishwoman; that the day might come when her story would be made public. But he left nothing undone which could appeal to the natural weakness of the woman; and there was a morning when she was carried up to see a man flogged in the courtyard of the fort. The lash falling brutally upon the bare flesh seemed to cut her own shoulders; the screams and groans of the wretched victim were so many appeals for her merciful intercession; she swooned when she saw the blood flow, but her answer to Bonzo was unchanged.

“You are cowards here,” she said, “and you are not clever in your cowardice! You do not know the truth when you hear it. And you have no manners, monsieur. Oh, you do not frighten me at all. I laugh when you look like that. If you could only see yourself, you would laugh too.”

She bore herself bravely indeed; but when the iron door groaned upon its hinges, and she was left alone, and no sound but the surging of the sea against the bastions was borne in to her from without, she would sink down upon the bed, and tears and wretchedness would conquer her. She had no longer a friend in all the world, she said. Her love for Paul struggled for a while bravely against the damning testimony he had given in the council-room. She was clever enough to think that possibly some deep and hidden meaning was behind his words; but when the days passed and he did not come, when no message, no word from him reached her, the well of her love began to be dried up; she accounted him her friend no more; she was, in spirit and in thought, a broken-hearted woman.

The morning of the fortieth day dawned generously, for there was a gift of April sunshine in her room and the gaunt stone walls were touched with its warming glow. Marian awoke at daybreak, and being permitted to walk for an hour upon the ramparts--a concession made to her but thrice in the weeks of her imprisonment--she beheld the town again and wondered that the sun of spring could so transform it. Even the grim shapes of the barracks were softened by the splendour of the morning light. She could distinguish the gilded domes and minarets of the churches; the cramped yet picturesque houses huddled about the merchants’ harbour; the masts of ships in the docks; the stately hulls of ironclads and cruisers; could hear the blasts of bugles, the shrill piping of whistles, the clank of the great hammers at the arsenal. But the sunshine touched every outstanding object with its transforming rays. The muzzles of the great guns, peeping from the tremendous mole of the island, were capped with gold; there were flashes of fire upon all the bright places of the ships; the sea sparkled and foamed and rolled merrily over the silver shallows of sand. She could perceive the Ingrian coast and the woods creeping down to the water’s edge; it was for her an emblem of the life she had lost. The very beauty of the morning awoke in her that intense longing for liberty which is the swift punishment of the prisoner. Everywhere the new day spoke of life and work and the gladness of being; but for her it had no message.

The short hour passed all too swiftly. She returned to her cell at seven o’clock and to the meagre repast prepared for her. She asked herself, while she drank the welcome tea and ate the coarse bread, if Bonzo would come again upon that morning to threaten her or cajole her as he had threatened and cajoled so often. An inconquerable spirit of mischief prompted her to tell him some fool’s tale with which he might occupy himself for a season. When someone knocked at her door presently, she made sure that this was her opportunity, and began to rack her brains for a plausible story. But the door was opened and the man who entered was not Bonzo.

“Paul!” she cried, and then stood silent and wondering.

Her lover, for a truth, stood before her. She saw that he was dressed in the full uniform of a captain of artillery--the green tunic with the scarlet epaulettes and the scarlet and black facings, the pipe-clayed belt, the high black boots, the fur cap with the golden eagle for its crest. But his face wore deep lines which had not been there at carnival, and the hand which rested upon the hilt of his sword was thin and white. For an instant he could not find his tongue. He stood rocking upon his heels as his habit was, while he sought vainly for some word which might give his tongue release.

Marian had risen from her seat as he entered, and when her first cry of wonder had escaped her she was quick to take pity upon him. Instinctively she had hidden the plate of coarse bread behind her cup that he might not see of what kind her food was; instinctively, too, she touched her wind-blown curls with her fingers and looked down at the shabby dress she wore.

“It is you, then,” she said, with a poor attempt at gaiety. “I might have known that no one else in Russia would knock at my door.”

Paul did not answer her. He was staring at the wretched furniture of the cell. He shivered as though the cold of the granite walls had struck his own heart.

“My God!” he cried; “is this your new home, Marian?”

She expected that he would begin to excuse himself, and to tell her why he had been a witness against her in the council-room. His pity for her was an enemy of her resolution to hide the truths of her misfortune from him.

“Yes,” she said, standing defiantly with her back to the wall; “I am always at home here--to my friends. You need not ask me if I have a day. I shall be glad--no, do not touch me--I am quite strong--Paul----”

How it was she knew not, but when next she opened her eyes Paul’s arms were about her and she was held close in his strong embrace. The tears still glistened upon her cheek, but they were tears of gladness.

“Beloved,” he said, “do not wound me; I suffer too--oh, God knows! Every hour has been an hour of pain since they took you away; there has been no sunshine for me, no day, no night; my life has stood still; I have lived in the darkness; my eyes have seen no image but the image of her I love. Marian--you will not turn from me now?”

He held her closer for the passionate words to be whispered into her ear; nor did she restrain him. The long hours of loneliness were remembered too well that this new love should not win her gratitude.

“You told them,” she sobbed; “it was your word. They knew nothing until you spoke. If I suffer, it is by your hand; your love for me has brought me here. How can I believe----”

The reproach was choked suddenly upon her lips. The arms which held her trembled as with cold. She looked into the face of the man, and the pain written upon it turned her anger to pity.

“No, no, Paul--do not listen to me,” she cried in turn, clinging to him. “It is not true. Oh, I am not changed; I am only weak, and ill, and lonely. Tell me you are my friend; tell me you will help me!”

His answer was to kiss her again and again upon the forehead and the lips.

“I am your friend always, little Marian. Would to God I could promise as you wish! How shall I help you here--in this place? It cannot be. You have made them your enemies, and they do not know how to forgive. I am the servant, and it is my duty to obey.”

She looked up at him, and smiling now through her tears.

“And you have obeyed. Oh, I understand,” she said quickly. “When you spoke against me I knew that you must speak. Paul, I do not love you less because of that--how could I?”

She kissed him prettily, but a flush of shame coloured his face, for he remembered how much fear for himself had prompted his confession in the council-room. It was upon his tongue to make a full confession to her, for his simple honesty rebelled at her generous confidence; but she began to speak of other things, and chiefly of the terrible forty days which had passed.

“You did not come,” she said, “and I counted the hours. Then I said you would never come, or that you were ill. Paul, you have been ill--your eyes tell me that.”

She held his face between her hands that the sunlight might fall upon it, but he shrugged his shoulders indifferently.

“It was nothing,” he answered; “nothing at all. The work has been heavy, and I am tired--I do not sleep. It will be better when the summer comes.”

He did not tell her that for ten days after they had arrested her he had been at the point of death, and was newly risen from a bed of sickness to visit the fort. Nevertheless, a woman’s instinct guided her unerringly.

“Oh, my love, my love, if I had foreseen all--if I had told you of my folly and my trouble! And now it is too late; you suffer when you should forget. Oh, you must forget, Paul; forget that I ever came to Kronstadt; forget that you were my friend!”

He laughed brusquely.

“Shall I forget that I live, or that the sun shines?” he asked. “Shall I forget that your freedom is to be won, that we are both upon the threshold of our lives? No, for a truth, such things are not to be forgotten. Let us ask ourselves, rather, how the folly is to be undone, how our enemies are to be made our friends. It is because I believe in the possibility of these things that I am here this morning. If I can help you, Marian, it will be by telling them the truth as you have told it to me?”

There was a question in his words, the unspoken thought that she had hidden something from him.

“Paul,” she said earnestly, “you know that I have told you all as I have told it to them. I have no friends in Kronstadt, none in London. What I did was for the sake of the child. You see how it has helped him, when they will not even let me write to him now.”

“They will not let you write! You have asked them, then?”

“God knows, I have asked them on my knees. You do not know what humiliations they have put upon me here. I hope that you will never know.”

Paul laughed again. She looked up at him with startled eyes, but he held both her wrists and pushed her from him that he might watch her while he spoke.

“You think that little Dick has had no message?” he asked.

“How could he?” she exclaimed, though a suggestion of the truth began to dawn upon her.

“You think that he will write to you no more?” continued Paul, with a child’s pleasure in his words.

A smile lighted her face.

“Tell me!” she cried; “do not torture me!”

Laughing still, he released her hands and took a letter-case from his pocket. His thin fingers trembled while he fumbled with the many scraps the case contained, but at last he found a paper scrawled over with a child’s writing.

“There,” he said, laying the scrawl upon the table, “that is how little Dick forgets to write.”

He turned away and walked to the door of the cell, a subtle delicacy forbidding him to watch the tears upon the blotted paper or to listen to the half-spoken words of love and gratitude. Almost his first thought on the morrow of the dreadful day, when he had seen the soldiers at the Governor’s house, was one for the child for whom this sacrifice was made. And now he reaped his reward.

“Dick shall write every week,” he said, “and I shall be your mouthpiece. Do not be afraid; I have planned it all, and he will learn to call me brother. Are you not glad, little girl?”

“I love you,” she said simply. “I am lonely no more, for your love shall be with me always.”

The footsteps of a sentry in the court without forced them apart, and Paul began to remember again the purpose with which he had been sent to Fort Alexander.

“I am come here to question you,” he said; “we must not forget that. They think that you have friends, but I shall tell them all, and then we shall see. They must not keep you in this place. I will not rest until you are at Fort Katherine. I will see the General at once; he shall know how it is, and he will not refuse me. Oh, you are to be lonely no more, Marian--that day is past. We will begin the summer together, and it shall be our summer always. The sun will shine upon us and we will forget the shadows.”

“You make me forget them already, Paul,” she answered; “it is summer for me now. I am happy even here when I know that to-morrow will bring you to me again.”

“To-morrow and all the to-morrows,” he said cheerily. “I will find a way, be sure; there is no door which my love for you shall not open; no night so dark that I shall not see the brightness of your eyes; no day so silent that I shall not hear your voice. God guard you, little girl, and give you back to me!”

He stooped once more to kiss her and went from the room quickly that he might say nothing which should awake her from this new dream of content. There had been a ray of sunlight in the cell, but when he was out upon the sea again it seemed to him that the sun shone no more and that darkness lay upon the land.

“God help me! how could I tell her the truth?” he thought. “They will send her to the capital and I shall see her no more.”