The Green Book Part 14

"None of your side streets," said Jakuskin, "but just you drive along the Prospect and over the Fontanka Ringstra.s.se, where the patrols are.

Don't be afraid about us, my man; we have our pistols."

"Ah, there's no use in that, children. The robbers might let you pa.s.s scot-free when they saw your pistols; but the guards have no fear of firearms, and they would plunder you."

And the jemsik was by no means joking. Under the police presidency not only the soldiers managed to slip out of barracks to act the light-fingered gentry, but the patrols shared in the spoil, and commissioners of police were the most reliable of accomplices. Great folk only ventured out at night with mounted escorts; their palace-doors were strengthened with iron bars.

As they drove along the two men began scolding Diabolka for letting Chevalier Galban escape her, telling her how they had had to get rid of him at the cost of some thousands of rubles.

Just as the sledge turned off from the broad Prospect into Fontanka Ringstra.s.se, five armed men suddenly sprang out upon it. Two seized the horses' bridles, one levelled his weapon at the coachman's head, the two others fell upon the occupants of the sledge. All were armed with swords and pistols, their faces concealed by masks; long sheep-skins covered their persons from head to foot; their tall, pointed fur caps alone betraying them to be not only soldiers but grenadiers. One of them, speaking in French (consequently an officer), e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed:

"La bourse ou la vie, messieurs!"

On which Diabolka, suddenly springing up, jerked the pistol directed at Pushkin's head out of the a.s.sailant's hand, and, throwing both arms round his neck, began, coaxingly:

"Ei, ei, sweetheart, cousin! would you plunder poor folk like us? Don't you know us, then? Look! this is the brave Jakuskin, a captain on half-pay; this, Pushkin, who has more creditors on his heels than kopecs in his pocket. I am Diabolka, who pays, and is paid, in kisses. Here are a few--on your cheeks, eyes, lips. There, take as many as there is room for. But if you are wise, and want to make money, there's a rich gentleman just now on his way home from Araktseieff Palace, who has just pocketed thirteen thousand rubles at roulette. If you are quick you'll catch him up on the ice, crossing the Fontanka. He is wearing a red fox coat, trimmed with white bear-skin."

Her words were as magic. With one accord the four thieves, deserting sledge and their leader, took to their heels in the direction of the Fontanka, as if they were possessed. The officer, too, seeing himself thus left alone, endeavored to free himself from Diabolka's embrace. But that was not so easy.

"Stop! just one kiss on the tip of your nose."

Then he, too, was suffered to follow his companions. Diabolka laughed unrestrainedly.

"Ha, ha, ha! what good the consciousness of a meritorious action does one! They are safe to clear out Chevalier Galban."

"But you might have let the fellow off the last kiss," growled Jakuskin.

"On the tip of his nose, too! As though he could feel it through his mask!"

"But those kisses were useful," returned the girl, with a sly wink.

"While kissing him, I was spying what the dear youth was wearing upon his breast, and this is what I found." And she held up a star set with diamonds.

"Eh, the devil! Why, it is a Vladimir order of the first cla.s.s,"

exclaimed Jakuskin.

"Our Rinaldo is high up in the army."

"A Vladimir order set with brilliants! Eh, jemsik, hold hard, and strike a light. The names of owners, as a rule, are usually written in gold inside the ribbons of the orders."

The jemsik, taking out his flint and steel, struck a light, and while Diabolka puffed at it with distended cheeks, the two men simultaneously read out the name engraven on the ribbon--"Jevgen Araktseieff."

"By Jove! The son of our trusty Araktseieff, too, plies the trade,"

cried Jakuskin.

"He is a known _mauvais sujet_."

"Well, Diabolka, this is a fine catch. For this you may claim to-morrow every penny Jevgen has robbed overnight."

"And next day I should be as poor as ever," laughed the girl.

"If you chose, this order might make you Jevgen's wife--a real countess," put in Pushkin.

"What would be the good of that? In a week after I should be going back to the gypsies."

"Do you mean to expose him--to have him hanged?"

"I am not such a fool; they would hang me beside him. Leave it to me. I know what to do with my prize."

Jakuskin said to Pushkin, in German, that Diabolka might not understand:

"That man wrecked my whole life; and I had him at my pistol's mouth but now! But the ball is destined for another now. You see, I did not even break out into fury when I read his name. When we are on the watch for bears we can afford to let foxes go. The huntsman's spear is on his neck. He is in Diabolka's clutches. Come, let us go to the Bear's Paw, and hear Germain's new effusion, _The Song of the Knife_."

CHAPTER XI

THE HUNTED STAG

Next morning the Office of the Great Fast was initiated in Isaac Cathedral by the court singers--a celebrated choir of men and boys, who possessed the finest voices in the whole empire, and who were maintained at great cost.

Contemporary accounts extol these services beyond anything ever produced by human voices. In his riper years the Czar could endure no other music than the sound of harps and mystic sacred song. It was on that account that Zeneida Ilmarinen, the church singer, was so great a favorite of the Czar. He never went to a theatre. Did he desire music his favorite artiste was commanded to the Winter Palace or the Hermitage. During the fasts, however, he went daily to church to hear the boys sing.

On such occasions it was considered the correct thing by the aristocracy also to go to church, and in order to appear still more devotional, great ladies made a point of wearing no rouge, only powder.

In the row next the high altar sat Prince Ghedimin, Muravieff, Orloff, Trubetzkoi, all of whom had inscribed their names in "the green book"; after them, those officers of the guards who had deliberated the previous night whether the Czar should die, or be merely banished. There they stood in two rows, erect, with military bearing, holding their drawn swords in their hands.

The heads of all were bowed so low that perhaps none remarked that the husband and wife, the rulers of all the Russias, only extended a finger to each other as they pa.s.sed up the aisle, deigned no look at one another as the service proceeded, and exchanged no word together as they took the holy-water.

Zeneida also was among the congregation. As she left church an officer bowed to her. It was Pushkin.

"Madame, you have been weeping--your cheeks are wet. Was _some one_, then, in church?"

"There is no _some one_," returned Zeneida; "but the music tells on one's nerves. We are but animals; even dogs howl when they hear music."

"Did you observe with what devotion the Czarina kissed the crucifix? Did you not know what was her pet.i.tion?"

"I neither know, nor did I remark anything."

It was late before the church service had ended. The congregation quickly dispersed and hastened home. The streets were deserted. On the first day of Lent every family man makes a point of supping at home. And as among the poorer cla.s.ses in St. Petersburg only about every seventh man is blessed with a wife, others join together and get some female of their own cla.s.s in life to prepare the Lenten soup for them. This is seen on every table, rich and poor, whether in hardware vessel or delicate china tureen. Even upon the Czar's table it may not be absent; the imperial cook prepares it according to time-honored formula.

This soup every head of the family is expected to partake of in his own home. Time was when even in the Winter Palace the custom was observed.

Time was! The table was laid for two covers only; no guests were invited. The many dishes, all prepared with oil and honey, were served for the two alone. Then came a day when the imperial wife awaited her husband in vain at the Lenten meal. He came not. And yet she waited and waited; the supper waited also. Some untoward circ.u.mstance had come between them. First the meats grew cold, then their hearts. Yet all the same, year after year, the wife had two covers laid on the first evening in Lent, and waited on and on, until the dishes grew cold, and still she did not touch them. She was waiting for him. Hours would pa.s.s, the imperial wife sitting lonely, waiting, listening for the slightest sound, wondering whether it were not her husband's footstep outside the tapestried door which connected the corridor of their apartments--that door, at the opening of which her heart had formerly overflowed with earthly bliss. Alas! now the lock had long grown stiff and rusty.

Suddenly the clock began to strike--a mechanical clock which Araktseieff had had made in Paris. The piece it plays is the National Anthem; it plays it but once in the twenty-four hours--at one o'clock in the morning--the hour at which Czar Paul had been murdered by his generals and n.o.bles in his bedchamber.

The son of the murdered man, who had ascended the throne over his father's dead body, had, at the turn of the year, listened for many an anniversary to the solemn strain, kneeling low, bedewing his _prie dieu_ with his tears; and one being there was who fully shared the sorrow of his heart. With every fibre that heart of his vibrated to the sad notes, a truer timepiece than the clock: it attuned its note to the triumphant strains of victory, as to the undertone of sadness when it reproached him that his father's corpse had been his stepping-stone to the throne, threatening that his body, likewise, should be the stepping-stone to his successor. This was the great trouble of his life; the ever-present torture of his soul. To no one had he confided it save to his wife. No one had ever comforted him in the hours of his agonized wrestling with that burden of grief save his wife. Now that is all over. The soul-destroying blue eyes, in whose depths he had sought a new heaven, gave him for heaven the cold, blue ether eternally separating earth from heaven for him. The Czar of all the Russias has no one in whom he can trust. The mightiest of the mighty has no place where he may sleep in peace. The most forlorn pilgrim of the desert is not so utterly alone as is he.

When the last notes of the hymn has died away, and the husband, so long waited for, has not returned, the wife, rising, fetches a portrait of him painted upon ivory, and places it upon the table by the place he should have occupied. It is the portrait of a proud, heroic man, with smiling lip and unclouded brow--such as he was as a bridegroom. She gazes at it long, so long that her eyes are suffused with tears. Nothing is left to her of him but this portrait. He whom it represents has long ceased to smile.