The Green Book Part 81

The tapestried door was backed with iron; the a.s.sailants could not force it. Johanna threw a cloak about her, not mentioning her wound, and seizing her husband's hand led him hurriedly through the familiar pa.s.sage until they had reached the gate of the subterranean way under the garden.

They were saved. But only for a brief period. From the adjacent city of Warsaw resounded the clang of alarm-bells: the insurrection had triumphed.

Outside the walls of Lazienka they met with a mounted lancer. Calling to him, the Viceroy bade him dismount and give him his horse, and, springing on to it, he lifted Johanna behind him and galloped away.

But the lancer making haste to inform the insurgents of the Viceroy's flight, he was quickly followed.

A division of lancers reached the fugitives in the forest of Bjelograd.

The double burden was too much for the horse. The leader of the troops was Krizsanowski himself.

As they came up to her husband Johanna encircled him with her arms.

"Only through my body do you reach his!"

Krizsanowski replaced his sword in its scabbard.

"Good! So let it be! There's not a man who could injure _your_ husband!

We will form Constantine's escort."

And the troop of Polish cavalry gave escort to the fugitive Viceroy until he had reached the encampment just a.s.sembled for manuvres.

An enemy protecting a fugitive!

Magnanimity is sometimes contagious, not always; but occasionally people are carried away by it.

It was only in camp that Constantine knew that Johanna, in saving his life, had been wounded. It touched him to the heart. Only such deep emotion as he then experienced makes it intelligible that a Russian Grand Duke, viceroy and field-marshal, could rise to the unexampled magnanimity of uttering in camp such words as these to the troops ranged before him in battle-array:

"He who is a Pole, and loves his fatherland more than he does me, may step forth from the ranks and go free."

And, with arms and banners, he suffered every Polish regiment under his command to march out, and then with his remaining Russian troops withdrew from Poland, and, at their head, returned to Russian territory.

Could such immense magnanimity be forgiven?

Never!

Upon arrival at Minsk the Grand Duke Constantine died suddenly.

By whose hand?

No other than that of _the man with the green eyes_. Only that this time it was not he of the Tsatir Dagh, but he of the banks of the Ganges--cholera.

It was said, too, that he was buried--that his coffin had been lowered into the vault in the Church of Peter-Paul at St. Petersburg. But the people would not believe it.

Tradition has it that he was taken prisoner and conveyed to "Holy Island."

Not many years after there was a peasant rising, and it was rumored that their leader was Constantine. The rising was suppressed, but the leader was not captured; the people had hidden him too securely.

And to this day the belief is that Grand Duke Constantine is still alive.

The fishermen of Lapland, when at nights their boats beat about off Solowetshk Monastery, often see the figure of a tall, gray-headed man wandering about the bastions. It is attended by two armed sentinels; and ever and anon the spectre raises its clasped hands to heaven, as if in supplication.

Then they whisper to one another that the mysterious prisoner of Holy Island is none other than the vanished Constantine, though forty years have pa.s.sed since his disappearance.

Snow lies deep all around--so deep that no roads are visible. A gray, leaden firmament spans the horizon. All is intense silence.

But beneath the deep snow something is still growing, and the roots of which will never die.

THE END