CHAPTER XV.
A SHE DEVIL.
The more I contemplated the position the less I liked it, and the moreurgent appeared the reasons for hurrying Olga out of the country.
All my care was for her. Before this new feeling of mine for her hadforced itself upon me, the situation had been really a game of witswith my life as the stake; but now Olga's life, or at least herliberty, was also at stake. It was there the crisis pinched me till Iwinced and writhed under it. Fear had got hold of me at last and Itugged restlessly at the chain.
That night and the next day, the day of Christian Tueski's funeral,were occupied with heavy duties, because the authorities, both militaryand civil, persisted in believing there was danger of an emeute. Icould have counselled them differently if I had dared to open my lips.At least I thought I could; although I did not then hold the key to themystery.
I got it from Paula Tueski.
In the afternoon of the day but one after the funeral, I had a briefnote asking me to call on her.
I went and found her surrounded by all the signs and trappings of thedeepest mourning. She received me very gravely, and while there wasanyone in the room, she played the part of the sorrowing, disconsolatewidow: but the instant we were alone she shewed a most indecent andrevolting haste to let me know her mind.
"We are alone, now, Alexis," she said.
"I have called as you asked and because I wished to express mysympathy...."
"Psh! Don't let us be hypocrites, you and I," she exclaimed, halfangrily, and with great energy. "I do not pretend to you that I amsorry to be free, and don't you pretend to me either."
I didn't answer, and my silence irritated her.
"Would you have me weep, tear my hair, put ashes on my head and grovelin the dust because the biggest villain and coward and beast that everlived in human shape is dead? I hated him living; shall I love himdead?"
"At least the dead are dead, and to revile them is mere emptybrutality," said I, somewhat harshly.
"Then I like empty brutality if it relieves my feelings. God! I havebeen a hypocrite long enough. I should hate myself if I did not speakthe truth to you."
I shrugged my shoulders. I had no answer.
"Why didn't you send a wreath of pure white flowers as an emblem ofyour regard? Why not a message to swell the millions of lies that menhave uttered in their squalid fear of offending the Government bysilence? Ugh! It makes me sick when I think of it all;" and sheshuddered as if in disgust. "He was a devil, and I won't call him byany softer name merely because his power to harm is gone. Didn't hetry to murder you? And wasn't it jealousy? Ah, we have much to bethankful to the Nihilists for, you and I." There was an indescribablesuggestion of a hidden meaning about this.
I hated the woman.
"You have no clue yet, I suppose?"
"Yes, I have a clue," she replied, with a laugh that sounded like athreat. "I can put my hand on the murderer when I will--and I will, ifhe proves a traitor."
"You are in a dramatic mood," I answered. "Who is the man? Why notdenounce him? Surely this act is what you must call treachery."
"There was a Nihilist plot to kill the man," she said, speaking withcontemptuous flippancy of accent of the dead.
"Yes, I told you that myself," I replied.
"It was because of that he died."
"So everybody thinks."
"And how do you account for it?" she asked, looking at me keenly.
"I have no more idea than yourself."
She laughed; and a hard forced laugh it was. Then she got up from herchair and walked twice up and down the room in dead silence. Shestopped in front of me and stared down into my eyes.
"Alexis, do you really love me?"
The question was an exceedingly unpleasant one and filled me withdisgust.
"Surely this is no time for us to speak of such things," I said.
"Do you love me, Alexis," she repeated.
"I will not answer now," I said, rising.
"Why not? Why should we not speak of love now--now, aye, and always?Or is your passion so poor and sickly a thing that a puff from the windof propriety kills it? Not speak of such things! I would plight mylove to you across the very body of the dead man!" She spoke withpassionate vehemence. "Remember what I told you--your life is mine.You cannot escape me. Now, tell me, do you love me?"
"I have given my answer, and if you ask that question again to-day Iwill not stop in the room," I said angrily: the woman's persistencyincreasing my disgust.
She laughed--a half hysterical laugh of anger.
"So you will not stop in the room and will never, I suppose, return.Be careful," she cried, with one of her quick passionate changes. "OrI will send you away and never let you come back except begging formercy on your knees for yourself and your sister." She turned away andstood by the window; and I could see by her movements that she wasstruggling with violent emotions.
She came back at length, the face paler and the voice not so steady.
"I will ask you if you love me," she said. "And I dare you to go awayfrom the room."
I accepted the challenge without an instant's hesitation.
"I am going. I will see you when you are cooler," and I went to thedoor.
With a quick rush she prevented my opening it, and putting her back toit stared at me in the most violent passion, which thickened her voiceas she spoke.
"You shall go directly--if you wish to. You will make me hate you, oneday, Alexis, and then--I will kill you."
"It will be far better for me to come some other time," I said, anxiousto leave.
"You will have plenty of opportunities, never fear," she retorted, witha very angry sneering laugh. "And what is more, you will not dare notto use them. Listen--it is love for you drives me to this--a love thatyou can never escape now, Alexis, even if you had the will."
She paused; but I said nothing. I had nothing to say. All I wishedwas to get away.
"Do you think there is anything I would not do for your love, Alexis?I have told you there is nothing--told you so scores of times. Now, Ihave proved it. Do you hear--proved it. I proved it a few nights agowhen this hand plunged the dagger hilt deep into my husband'sheart--for your sake."
I started back and looked at the woman in horror.
"Yes, this hand"--she held it out--"so white, smooth, deft, andshapely. Don't start from it. There is no blood shewing on it now.And never was. I know how to thrust a dagger home too cleverly toleave a trace of either blood or guilt on me. In all this Moscow ofours the one person who is deemed above all others guiltless--ismyself. Had it been in reality the Nihilist deadly secret stroke thatmen deem it, it could not have been more cunningly contrived, moresecretly planned, more fatally executed. Yet the motive was not hateof a Government, but love for a man. For you, Alexis: you and youonly. Now do you wish to go?"
She moved away from the door; but I made no attempt to go. The horrorof her story had fascinated me.
"There was a tinge of hate in it, too, mark you, and more than a tinge.But I'll tell you all. You ought to know, since you were in realitythe cause of all. You gave me the motive, suggested the occasion, andprovoked that which led to it. More than that, too, you can by asingle word from me be made to bear the brunt. Now, will you go?"
Was the woman mad that she spoke in this way? If so, there was adevilish method in her madness, as the story she told quickly shewed me.
"I knew the day would come when either I should kill him or he wouldkill me; for he was a devil. Well, you roused all that was most evil,vicious, and fiendish in him in that interview; and when I saw him hewas like a man bereft of his wits. Every form of reproach he couldheap on me in cold, contemptuous, galling sneers he uttered with allthe calculated aggravation that could make a taunt unbearable. Hethreatened me in every tone of menace: and when I answered, turnedsuddenly furious and struck me violent blows and vowed to kill me. Itwas then I recalled your words, that there wa
s a Nihilist plot againsthis life; and I vowed I would be the means of carrying it out; for Iknew I could easily put suspicion away from me. I lured him cunninglyto that part of the house where he was found, plunged the dagger intohis breast, put into his pocket the forged warning of a Nihilistattack, opened the house at a point where a man could have entered,fastened to the dagger the Nihilist watchword, and then crept away tomy own rooms."
"It was a hellish plot," I exclaimed, hotly.
"It was inspired by love for you, Alexis. It was truly 'For Freedom'ssake.' Freedom that should unite us for ever."
"Do you think I could ever be anything to a woman whose hand is redwith murder?" I cried, in indignant horror.
"It was done for you--for love of you, Alexis."
"Love has no kin with murder," I exclaimed, bitterly.
"Your life is mine, remember," she answered, firmly. Her determinationand strength were inexhaustible. "This makes you ten thousand timesmore surely mine than ever. I told you you were the cause--and also,that you could be made to bear the brunt. Listen! You know wellenough what chance a Nihilist has on whom the fangs of suspicion havefastened. You are a Nihilist. Your sister is one also. I know this.Well, what chance, think you, would that Nihilist have of his lifewhose dagger it was that found its way between my husband's ribs. Whatthen, if I had found the sheath of it and secreted it to save the man?Suppose too, that I had kept back the discovery because of my guiltylove for him. And further that he had come at the time to tempt myhonour and that he was leaving the house when my husband, roused by thenoise I made, met him; and that I saw the deed done?" She paused andchanged her tone to one of fierce directness, as she continued:--"Thedagger that killed Christian Tueski is your own weapon, known by itssheath to a hundred people: and that sheath, with your name on it, isin my possession. What chance of life would there be for you and yoursif these things were made known. Now, do you wish to go?"
A hot and passionate reply rose to my lips, but was checked beforeuttered. I thought of Olga, and I knew that every word this woman saidwas true--that no power in Russia could save my life or Olga's libertyif the tale were told now.
Delay I must have at any cost. Time in which to meet this woman'shorrible cunning and daring plot. If I had hated her before, she wasnow loathsome; while the fears she had stirred on Olga's accountintensified and embittered a thousandfold my resentment. Yet hatefulas the task was, I was prepared to continue my part with her.
"You think this love?" I said, after a pause in which she had beenwaiting breathlessly for me to speak. "Do women love the men they holdto them by the tether rope of threats?"
"Do women kill for the sake of men they do not love?"
"Do you think to keep my love by threatening me with death?"
"Have I not inflicted death to keep you? Why do you wish to bandyphrases? My deeds speak for themselves. They shew you well enoughwhat I will dare to keep you true to me. You are mine, Alexis, and nopower shall ever part us. I have told you this often before. It wasyou who sought me, who proffered me your love, who poured on me yourcaresses and roused the love in me, and roused it never to cease. Doyou think me a silly simple fool to be wooed and won and, whendeserted, willing to do no more than wring my feeble hands and shedsilly tears, and prate and maunder between my stupid sobs, that myheart is broken and that I fain would die--Bah! I am not of that sort.I am a woman who can will and act, and fashion my own ends in my ownway. It is not the stream that carries me, but I who turn the streameven though it be mingled with blood. No, no. If you play me false,Alexis, it is you, and not I, who shall die because my heart is broken."
She shewed this determination in every line of her beautiful face andmovement of her magnificent figure, as she stood before me a lovelyhateful type of a vengeful woman. She changed her mood, however, withastonishing suddenness and turned all softness and tenderness.
"But under all this lies my love," she said. "It was love drove me toeverything. Your pledge, too, that made me feel, as nothing else couldhave done, the wall of separation between us while he lived; and mylove could not endure it. Ah, how I love you!" and then in wordsburning with the fever of passion, she spoke of her love for me,lingering over the terms as if the mere utterance of them were anecstatic delight. She laid all to the account of this love, and thenwent on to name her terms--that I must marry her.
While she was speaking, I was thinking; trying to see some flaw in thedevilish coil she had spread round me. But I could see none. Timemight find a way: but even time she grudged, and did not mean to give.
"But we can't be married now at the moment when your husband isscarcely lying cold in his grave," I said, aghast at her cold-bloodedproposition. "Every man and woman in Moscow would immediately think wehad murdered him together in order to marry."
"Every man and woman will not know," she answered calmly. "Do youthink there is no such thing as a secret marriage possible in this HolyRussia of ours, or that gold cannot buy silence here just as anywhereelse in the world?"
"I know that a secret marriage under these circumstances would put thelives of us both into the keeping of anyone who knew of it, howeverwell you paid them. The more you paid, indeed, the more certain theinference."
"I care nothing for that; nor will you if you love me as you have oftensworn you do." She uttered this with the energy and passion whichalways were shewn when she was crossed. But in this I was naturally asresolute as she.
"I will not do it," I said very firmly. "Understand me. I will not doit. It is nothing to do with love in any way at all: but simplyself-protection. It would be sheer suicide, and that I can do muchmore simply in other ways. I refuse absolutely to put both our livesinto the keeping of any man in Russia, however holy and however wellbribed. When we are married, it must be openly, in the light of dayand before men's faces; and that most certainly cannot be until allthis excitement about your husband's death has died down, and themarriage can take place without causing suspicion. That must be atleast six months hence--and probably a year or even two years."
"I won't wait," she cried instantly and angrily. "You want to breakwith me. I am no fool."
"As you will. Then instead of marrying me you can denounce me and comeand see me beheaded or strangled. If you threaten me much longer," Isaid bitterly, "you will make me prefer one of the latter fates."
She bent close to me, trying to read my thoughts.
"And meanwhile?" she asked,
"Are you such a mad woman that you would have us placard the walls ofthe city with our secrets? Haven't we all Russia to hoodwink? Do yousuppose your police agents and secret agents are all fools, to seenothing, think nothing, infer nothing? It may be hard for us to beapart, but what else is possible? Even this visit is fool-hardinessitself and may set a thousand tongues clacking. Heaven knows, if evera pair of lovers had need of caution we have now! Have you dared somuch for our marriage only to toss it all away now just for the lack ofa little self-control? We must see very little of one another. Thatis the only possible course."
"I'll not consent," she cried again, vehemently, and broke out into afresh storm of protests and reproaches. But I held to my decision,confident that she would see she must give way.
We parted without coming to any definite decision; and I was glad,because it spared me the infliction of those outward signs of affectionin which she delighted to indulge and which now would have been morethan ever repulsive.
But the knowledge of the increased peril and embarrassment overwhelmedme with a feeling of anxious doubt and most painful and gallingimpotence.