The Green Book Part 57

Araktseieff feigned not to see her; did not lift his eyes from the papers before him.

"Fraulein Ilmarinen," said Alexander, "you desired to speak with me personally. You may speak."

"Will your Majesty forgive the boldness of my request, but I have papers to place before you which the owner intrusted to me on sole condition that I delivered them personally into your own hands. These papers form the diary of the late Princess Sophie Narishkin!"

With a deep sigh the Czar exclaimed, "Poor child!" his voice trembling with agitation.

"It was her last wish, and I must fulfil it."

"You were with her, then, in her last hours?"

"And afterwards. She had sent for me."

"It was you who closed her eyes?"

Zeneida bowed her head silently.

"I thank you," said the Czar, and, taking from her the white-bound diary, he held out his hand to her--a soft, thin hand--but the action was not a cordial one.

Zeneida kissed the hand.

"Have you any wish, Fraulein Ilmarinen?"

"Only one, sire! That you should graciously please to read the last three pages of Sophie's diary _in my presence_."

The Czar glanced back, as though to ask Araktseieff's permission. Then only did he resolve to accede to her wish, and, opening the diary, he read.

He bit his lips to conceal his emotion. But Zeneida well knew what it was he was reading; she knew the whole contents of the diary, as well as those last confused lines written by the convulsed hand of an unhappy child, looking forward with yearning and dread to the cold embrace of death. And the Czar, as he concluded the last page, looking up at Zeneida, saw that her eyes were filled with tears.

Mutely he nodded his head and sighed.

"She wanted me to read this to exonerate Pushkin, did she not? She wished it so. She had a great, n.o.ble soul!"

"Indeed she had, sire!"

"And it was at her desire; and Pushkin was only fulfilling her last wishes in acting as he did?"

"He could not have done otherwise."

"I believe it. He could not have done otherwise. And yet I cannot reconcile myself to the thought that he did it--that in the very same hour that he had covered the face of one bride with the funereal veil he could draw the bridal veil over the face of the other! He had to do it!

And yet it seems incomprehensible to human understanding how there can be a whole eternity in one short hour of time; how, in one short hour, a man can fly from the arctic pole to the equator; how, in one and the same moment, a man can mourn over a dead love and marry a living one!"

"But if he had loved her previously?" asked Zeneida, softly.

"What did you say?"

"If that which he experienced for her who was gone was but the adoration and boundless reverence for a being of another world, whose wings were already bearing her heavenward when first he knew her? If all the affection, tenderness, devotion which led him to the feet of his wors.h.i.+pped bride were but sacrifices offered at the shrine of a saint to keep her in life?"

Alexander struck his forehead with his hand.

"You are right! I never inquired into it. Never asked him if the dream of love were more than a sick girl's fancy? He suffered himself to be bound by that dream. That was the whole of it. In his heart he loved another, and would have sacrificed himself for her. It was all my doing, my fault--for everything I do is faulty, and everything that goes wrong is through me!"

These words were spoken by the Czar of All the Russias, not in bitterness, but with the deep melancholy of conviction. It moved the heart to pity.

Suddenly he turned to Zeneida.

"Do you wish me, then, to grant Pushkin permission to return?"

"No, sire. He is in good hands. Whoever is a true friend to him would rather desire that he should live a happy life _far from St.

Petersburg_!"

This surprised Araktseieff. He threw his pen down and scrutinized Zeneida.

"And for yourself, have you no wishes?" continued the Czar.

"I am leaving St. Petersburg to-morrow, sire!"

"And do you not wish that I should send you back your credentials?"

Oh, how proudly she raised her head at the words! She, too, was a queen, and she proved it.

"Sire, where I am once shown that my presence is unwelcome I do not remain!"

It was an audacious speech, bordering on treason, and not the manner in which to address the Czar of All the Russias!

Springing from his chair, it was the favorite and not the melancholy monarch who hastened to reply to the haughty singer.

"Are you aware, young lady, that there are duties from which a feeling of wounded pride does not exempt us? To them belongs the respect due to the throne and ruler, to whom you owe your fame."

Zeneida's bosom heaved; her nostrils dilated like those of a zebra prepared for the fight with a wolf. Her great dark flas.h.i.+ng eyes threatened to annihilate the favorite; her lips quivered as if with fever.

"Your Excellency," she gasped, "there are men who have carried grat.i.tude to their benefactors to the other ends of the earth with them, and who, though they had the misfortune to lose the favor of their august protectors, _have not gone home to sing the 'Knife Song'_!"

This was such a smart slap in the face to Araktseieff that he went back to his seat as though thinking it not worth his while to reply to the insinuation. Did she really know about it? Had she her secret spies--perhaps Diabolka?--the gypsy girl could write now!

Instead of his silenced favorite, the Czar now took up the lance. It was but fair. If the squire defends his lord, surely his lord should defend the squire.

"Your bitter remarks are in the wrong place, Fraulein Ilmarinen. If there is one man in Greater Russia who deserves to be looked upon as a perfect pattern of fidelity and loyalty, that is the man! He who has been at my side in every battle; has shared with me every danger, yet never claiming part in my glory; who watches, that I may sleep; who defies the world, to defend me; who forsakes me never, when all else desert me; that man is Araktseieff! What hard proofs of loyalty has he not withstood! How often have his enemies prevailed to banish him! And yet, as often as I have called, he has returned, without a word of reproach to me! I struck him a vital blow in exiling his son, yet he could kiss my hand and say I had done right, and remain loyal to me.

Such is Araktseieff!"

But the favorite could not glory in this imperial recognition of his services, for, as he resumed his seat and, in order to mark his contemptuous indifference, opened the Sophien post-bag, the very letter Jakuskin had mentioned to Zeneida came to hand, and absorbed his attention to such a degree that he actually became deaf to the sound of his own praises from the lips of the Czar.

Zeneida saw how his face was working with demoniacal torture; how, convulsed by nameless horror, it had changed to the semblance of a maddened spectre; she saw his hair stand on end, his lips become blue, his eyes start from their sockets.

"Oh, woe is me!" he suddenly roared out, in a tone so brutalized that the Czar turned round in affright. Araktseieff beat his breast with the letter, as a man tries to heal his wound with the hair of the dog that bit him, or of a scorpion with its dead body; then, up from his seat, "Oh, woe! oh, woe! that I came back! Why was I not there at the time?"

And he flung out of the room like a madman.

The Czar, thinking that a sudden fit of mania had seized the favorite, endeavored to hold him back.