A Cigarette-Maker's Romance Part 11

"Then go to the devil!" roared the infuriated German, shutting his window again with a vicious slam. A grunt of satisfaction from other directions was followed by the shutting of other windows, and presently all was silent again.

"I am afraid they sleep at the back of the house," said Vjera, growing despondent at last.

"I am afraid so, too," answered Johann Schmidt, proudly conscious that the noise he had made would have disturbed the slumbers of the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus.

CHAPTER VII.

"You had better let me take you home," said Schmidt, kindly, after the total failure of the last effort.

Vjera seemed to be stupefied by the sense of disappointment. She went back to the door of the tobacconist's house and put out her hand as though to ring the bell again then, realising how useless the attempt would be, she let her arms fall by her sides and leaned against the door-post, her m.u.f.fled head bent forward and her whole att.i.tude expressing her despair.

"Come, come, Vjera," said the Cossack in an encouraging tone, "it is not so bad after all. By this time the Count is fast asleep and is dreaming of his fortune, you know, so that it would be a cruelty to wake him up. In the morning we will all go with Fischelowitz and have him let out, and he will be none the worse."

"I am afraid he will be--very much the worse," said Vjera. "It is Wednesday to-morrow, and if he wakes up there--oh, I do not dare think of it. It will make him quite, quite mad. Can we do nothing more? Nothing?"

"I think we have done our best to wake up this quarter of the town, and yet Fischelowitz is still asleep. No one else can be of any use to us--therefore--" he stopped, for his conclusion seemed self-evident.

"I suppose so," said Vjera, regretfully. "Let us go, then."

She turned and with her noiseless step began to walk slowly away, Schmidt keeping close by her side. For some minutes neither spoke. The streets were deserted, dry and still.

"Do you think there is any truth at the bottom of the Count's story?"

asked the Cossack at last.

"I do not know," Vjera answered, shaking her head. "I do not know what to think," she continued after a little pause. "He tells us all the same thing, he speaks of his letters, but he never shows them to anyone. I am afraid--" she sighed and stopped speaking.

"I will tell you this much," said her companion. "That man is honest to the backbone, honest as the good daylight on the hills, where there are no houses to darken it and make shadows."

"He is an angel of goodness and kindness," said Vjera softly.

"I know he is. Is he not always helping others when he is starving himself? Now what I say is this. No man who is as good and as honest as he is, can have become so mad about a mere piece of fancy--about an invented lie, to be plain. What there is in his story I do not know, but I am sure that there was truth in it once. It may have been a long time ago, but there was a time once, when he had some reason to expect the money and the t.i.tles he talks of every Tuesday evening."

"Do you really think that?" asked Vjera, eagerly. Her own understanding had never gone so far in its deduction.

"I am sure of it. I know nothing about mad people, but I am sure that no honest man ever invented a story out of nothing and then became crazy because it did not turn out true."

"But you, who have travelled so much, Herr Schmidt, have you ever heard the name before--have you ever heard of such a family?"

"I have a bad memory for names, but I believe I have. I cannot be sure. It makes no difference. It is a good Russian name, in any case, and a gentleman's name, I should think. Of course I only mean that I--that you should not think that because I--in fact," blundered out the good man, "you must not suppose that you will be a real countess, you know."

"I?" exclaimed Vjera, with a nervous, hysterical laugh, which the Cossack supposed to be genuine.

"That is all I wanted to say," he continued in a tone of relief, as though he felt that he had done his duty in warning the poor girl of a possible disappointment. "It may be true--of course, and I am sure that it once was, or something like it, but I do not believe he has any chance of getting his own after so long."

"I cannot think of it--in either way. If it is all an old forgotten tale which he believes in still-why then, he is mad. Is it not dreadful to see?

So quiet and sensible all the week, and then, on Tuesday night, his farewell speech to us all--every Tuesday--and his disappointment the next day, and then a new week begun without any recollection of it all! It is breaking my heart, Herr Schmidt!"

"Indeed, poor Vjera, you look as though it were."

"And yet, and yet--I do not know. I think that if it were one day to turn out true--then my heart would be quite broken, for he would go away, and I should never see him again."

Accustomed as she was to daily a.s.sociation with the man who was walking by her side, knowing his good heart and feeling his sympathy, it is small wonder that the lonely girl should have felt impelled to unburden her soul of some of its bitterness. If her life had gone on as usual, undisturbed by anything from without, the confessions which now fell from her lips so easily would never have found words. But she had been unsettled by what had happened in the early evening, and unstrung by her great anxiety for the Count's safety. Her own words sounded in her ear before she knew that she was going to speak them.

"I am sure that something dreadful is going to happen," she continued after a moment's pause. "He will go mad in that horrible prison, raving mad, so that they will have to--to hold him--" she sobbed and then recovered herself by an effort. "Or else--he will fall ill and die, after it--" Here she broke down completely and stopping in the middle of the street began crying bitterly, clutching at Schmidt's arm as though to keep from falling.

"I should not wonder," he said, but she fortunately did not catch the words.

He was very sorry for the poor girl, and felt inclined to take her in his arms and carry her to her home, for he saw that she was weak and exhausted as well as overcome by her anxiety. Before resorting to such a measure, however, he thought it best to try to encourage her to walk on.

"Nothing that one expects, ever happens," he said confidently, and pa.s.sing his arm through hers, as though to lead her away. "Come, you will be at home presently and then you will go to bed and in the morning, before you are at the shop, everything will have been set right, and I daresay the Count will be there before you, and looking as well as ever."

"How can you say that, when you know that he never comes on Wednesdays!"

exclaimed Vjera through her tears. "I am sure something dreadful will happen to him. No, not that way--not that way!"

Schmidt was trying to guide her round a sharp corner, but she resisted him.

"But that is the way home," protested the Cossack.

"I know, but I cannot go home, until I have seen where he is. I must go--you must not prevent me!"

"To the police-station?" inquired Schmidt in considerable astonishment.

"They will not let us go in, you know. You cannot possibly see him. What good can it do you to go and look at the place?"

"You do not understand, Herr Schmidt! You are good and kind, but you do not understand me. Pray, pray come with me, or let me go alone. I will go alone, if you do not want to come. I am not at all afraid--but I must go."

"Well, child," answered Schmidt, good-humouredly. "I will go with you, since you are so determined."

"Is this the way? Are you not misleading me? Oh, I am sure I shall never see him again--quick, let us walk quickly, Herr Schmidt! Only think what he may be suffering at this very moment!"

"I am sure he is asleep, my dear child. And when we are outside of the police-station we cannot know what is going on inside, whether our friend is asleep or awake, and it can do no good whatever to go. But since you really wish it so much, we are going there as fast as we can, and I promise to take you by the shortest way."

Her step grew more firm as they went on and he felt that there was more life in the hand that rested on his arm. The prospect of seeing the walls of the place in which the Count was unwillingly spending the night gave Vjera fresh strength and courage. The way was long, as distances are reckoned in Munich, and more than ten minutes elapsed before they reached the building. A sentry was pacing the pavement under the glare of the gaslight, his shadow lengthening, shortening, disappearing and lengthening again on the stone-way as he walked slowly up and down. Vjera and her companion stopped on the other side of the street. The sentinel paid no attention to them.

"You are quite sure it is there?" asked the girl, under her breath.

Schmidt nodded instead of answering.

"Then I will pray that all may be well this night," she said.

She dropped the Cossack's arm and slipped away from him; then pausing at a little distance, in the deep shadow of an archway opposite the station, she knelt down upon the pavement, and taking some small object, which was indistinguishable in the darkness, from the bosom of her frock she clasped her hands together and looked upwards through the gloom at the black walls of the great building. The Cossack looked at her in a sort of half-stupid, half-awed surprise, scarcely understanding what she was doing at first, and feeling his heart singularly touched when he realised that she was praying out here in the street, kneeling on the common pavement of the city, as though upon the marble floor of a church, and actually saying prayers--he could hear low sounds of earnest tone escaping from her lips--prayers for the man she loved, because he was shut up for the night in the police-station like an ordinary disturber of the peace. He was touched, for the action, in its simplicity of faith, set in vibration the chords of a nature accustomed originally to simple things, simple hopes, simple beliefs. Instinctively, as he watched her, Johann Schmidt raised his hat from his round head for a moment, and if he had possessed any nearer acquaintance with praying in general or with any prayer in particular it is almost certain that his lips would have moved. As it was, he felt sorry for Vjera, he hoped that the Count would be none the worse for his adventure, and he took off his hat. Let it be counted to him for righteousness.

As for poor Vjera herself, she was so much in earnest that she altogether forgot where she was. For love, it has been found, is a great suggester of prayer, if not of meditation, and when the beloved one is in danger a little faith seems magnified to such dimensions as would certainly accept unhesitatingly a whole mountain of dogmas. Vjera's ideas were indeed confused, and she would have found it hard to define the result which she so confidently expected. But if that result were to be in any proportion to her earnestness of purpose and sincerity of heart, it could not take a less imposing shape than a direct intervention of Providence, at the very least; and as the poor Polish girl rose from her knees she would hardly have been surprised to see the green-coated sentinel thrust aside by legions of angelic beings, hastening to restore to her the only treasure her humble life knew of, or dreamed of, or cared for.

But as the visions which her prayers had called before her faded away into the night, she saw again the dingy walls of the hated building, the gilt spike on the helmet of the policeman and the s.h.i.+ning blade that caught the light as he moved on his beat. For one moment Vjera stood quite still.

Then with a pa.s.sionate gesture she stretched out both arms before her, as though to draw out to herself, by sheer strength of longing, the man whose life she felt to be her own--and at last, wearied and exhausted, but no longer despairing altogether, she covered her face with her hands and repeated again and again the two words which made up the burden of her supplication.