CHAPTER III.
MY SECONDS.
I walked with my sister to her home, and then returned to my rooms andsat down to think out seriously and in detail the extraordinaryposition into which I had fallen.
The more I considered it the more I liked it, and I am bound to add themore dangerous it seemed. Obviously it was one thing to be mistakenfor a man and to pass for him for a few minutes or hours: but it wasquite another to take up his life where he had dropped it and play thepart day by day and week after week. There must be a thousand threadsof the existence of which no one but himself could know, yet each wouldhave to be laid correctly in continuation of the due pattern of hislife; or discovery would follow.
Here lay my difficulty, and for a time I did not see a way round it orthrough it or under it. So far as I could judge by all that my sisterhad told me, the resemblance between the real Alexis and myself wasstrictly limited to physical qualities. A freak of nature had made uscounterparts of one another in size, look, complexion, voice, andcertain gestures. But it stopped there. My other self was a subtle,cunning, intriguing, traitorous conspirator, and very much of a coward:while I--well, I was not that.
I come of a very old Cornish family with many of the Celticcharacteristics most strongly developed. I believe that I have acertain amount of mother wit or shrewdness, but no process that wasever known or tried with me was sufficient to drive into me evensufficient learning to enable me to scrape through a career. I was thedespair first of the Russian schoolmasters for over ten years, and nextof all the English tutors who took me in hand during the next ten. Iwent to a large English school, and was expelled, after a hundredscrapes, because I learnt nothing. I tried to cram for Oxford, butnever could get through Smalls; and the good old Master, who loved astrong man, almost cried when, after two years of ploughs, he had tosend me down, when I was the best oar in the eight, the smartest fieldand hardest hitter in the eleven, the fastest mile and half-mile in theVarsity, and one of the three strongest men in all Oxford.
But I had to go, and I went to an army crammer to try and be stuffedfor the service. I never had a chance with the books; but I carriedall before me in every possible form of sport. It was there I pickedup my fencing and revolver shooting. It became a sort of passion withme. I could use the revolver like a trickster and shoot to a hair'sbreadth; while with either broadsword or rapier I could beat thefencing master all over the school. However, I was beaten by theexaminers and my couple of years' work succeeded only in giving mymuscles the hardness of steel and flexibility of whipcord. I am not abig man, nearly two inches under 6ft, but at that time I had never metanyone who could beat me in any trial where strength, endurance, oragility was needed. But these would not satisfy the examiners, so Igave up all thought of getting into the army that way.
I tried the ranks, therefore, and joined a regiment in which a coupleof brainless family men had enlisted, as a step toward a commission.But I was only in for six months: and my surprise is that I stopped solong. There was a beast of a sergeant--a strong fellow in his way whohad been cock of the dunghill until I came--and after I'd thrashed himfirst with the single-sticks, and then with the gloves, and in awrestling bout had given him a taste of our Cornish methods, he markedme out for special petty illtreatment. It came to a climax one daywhen a couple of dozen of us were sent off on a train journey. I lefton the platform some bit of the gear. He noticed it and bringing it tothe carriage window, flung it in at me and, with a sneer and a bigcoarse oath, cried:--"D'ye think I'm here to wet-nurse you, youdamnation great baby?" And he waited a moment with the sneer still onhis face: and he didn't wait in vain, either. Forgetting all aboutdiscipline and thinking only of his insult, I flung out my left and hithim fair on the mouth, sending him down like a ninepin. Then I pickedup my things and went straight away to report myself to the officer incharge of us. There was a big row, with the result that the sergeantwas reduced to the ranks, and I was allowed to buy myself out, beinggiven plainly to understand that if I stayed in, my chance of acommission was as good as lost. This closed my army career.
For a few years I was at a loose end altogether--a man of actionwithout a sphere. Then the natural result followed. I fell madly inlove with my best friend's sister, Edith Balestier. I cursed my follyin having wasted my life, and filled the air with vows that I would setto work to increase my income of L250 a year to an amount such as wouldlet me give her a home worthy of her. She loved me. I know that. Buther mother didn't; and in the end, the mother won. Edith tossed meover ruthlessly, while I was away for a couple of months; and all in ahurry she married another man for his title and money.
It was only the old tale. I knew that well enough; but it seemed tobreak my last hope. Everything I'd ever really wanted, I'd alwaysfailed to get. I was like a lunatic; and vowed I'd kill myself afterI'd punished the woman who'd done worse than kill me.
I thought out a scheme and played it shrewdly enough. I shut theresolve out of sight, and laughed and jibed as though I felt no wound.And I waited. The chance came surely enough. I went down to a danceat a place a bit out of town and took my revolver with me. After awaltz I led my Lady Cargill out into the shrubbery and when she leastsuspected what I was about, whipped out the weapon and told her what Iwas going to do. She knew me well enough to feel I was in deadlyearnest; but she made no scene, such as another woman might. Her whitebeauty held my hand an instant, and in that time her husband, SirPhilip, came up. Then I had a flash of genius. I knew he was asjealous as a man could be and as he had known nothing of my relationswith Edith, like many another self-sufficient idiot, he imagined shehad loved him and no one else. I opened his eyes that night. Keepinghim in control with the pistol, I made him hear the whole passionfulstory of her love for me from her own lips; and I shall never forgethow the white of his craven fear changed to the dull grey of a sickenedheart as he heard. At a stroke it killed my desire to kill. I had hada revenge a thousand times more powerful. I had made the wife see thehusband's craven poltroonery, and the husband the wife's heartinfidelity; and I let them live for their mutual distrust andpunishment.
A month later I stood on the Moscow platform, my back turned on Englandfor ever, my face turned war-wards, and my heart ready for anydevilment that might offer, when my fate was tossed topsy-turvy into acauldron of welcome dangers, promising death and certainly calculatedto give me that distraction from my own troubles which I desired sokeenly.
I was thus ready enough to take up my new character in earnest and playit to the end. If I were discovered, it could not mean more thandeath; while there were possibilities in it which might have verydifferent results. War with Turkey was a certainty, and at such a timeI should be able to find my sphere, and might be able to carve formyself a position.
It was clear that Alexis had so far been known as a very different manfrom the kind that produces good soldiers: but men sometimes reformsuddenly, and the new Alexis would be cast in a quite different mould.The difficulty was to invent a pretext for the sudden change; and inregard to this a good idea occurred to me.
I resolved to say that I had had an ugly accident and a great fright,and to connect this with the shaving of my beard and moustache. Topretend that the mishap had effected as complete a change in my natureas in my appearance: as if my brain had been in some way affected. Imapped out a very boldly defined course of eccentric conduct whichwould be not altogether inconsistent with some such mental disturbance.I would be moody, silent, reserved, and yet subject to gusts and fitsof uncontrollable passion and anger: desperate in all matters touchingcourage, and contemptuously intolerant of any kind of interference. Iknew that my skill with the sword and pistol would soon win me respectand a reputation, while any mistakes I made would be set down toeccentricity. I was drawing from life--a French officer whom I hadknown stationed at Rouen: evidently a man with a past which no one evendared to question. I calculated that in this way I should make time tochoose my permanent course.
; I soon had an opportunity of setting to work.
The officer who, as Olga had told me, was to be my chief second in themorning, Lieutenant Essaieff, came to see me. He was immenselysurprised at the change in my appearance, scanned me very curiously andindeed suspiciously, and asked the cause.
"Drink or madness?" he put it laconically, in that tone of contemptwith which one speaks to a distrusted servant or a dislikedacquaintance.
Even my friends held me cheap, it seemed.
"Neither drink nor madness, if you please," said I, very sternly,eyeing him closely. "But a miracle."
"And which of the devils is it this time, Petrovitch?" he asked,laughing lightly. "Gad, he must have been hard put to it. Or is itone of the she-devils, eh? You know plenty of those. Let's have thetale." He laughed again; but the mirth was not so genuine that time,and I could see that the effect of the fixed stare with which Iregarded him began to tell.
"I'm in no mood for this folly," said I, very curtly. "Save for amiracle, I should now be a dead man. That's all. And I'll thank younot to jest about it."
He was serious now and asked:--"How did it happen?"
I made no answer, but sat staring moodily out in front of me, and yetcontriving to watch him as he eyed me furtively now and again, insurprise at the change in me.
"Are you ill, Petrovitch?" he asked at length.
"Hell!" I burst out with the utmost violence, springing to my feet."What is it to you?" And then with complete inconsequence I added:--"Iwas praying, and in answer a light flashed on me and would haveconsumed me wholly, but for a miracle. Half my clothes and myface-hair were consumed--and I was changed."
"Ah, prayer's a dangerous thing when you've a lot of arrears to makeup," he said with a sneer.
I turned and looked at him coldly and threateningly.
"Lieutenant Essaieff, you have been good enough to lend me yourservices for this business to-morrow morning, but that gives you notitle to insult me. After to-morrow you will be good enough to give mean explanation of your words."
He had risen and stood looking at me so earnestly that I half thoughthe suspected the change. But he did not.
"You will not be alive to demand it," he said, at length,contemptuously, clipping the words short in a manner that shewed me howangry he was and how much he despised me. "I'm only sorry I was foolenough to be persuaded to act for you," he added as he swung out of theroom.
I laughed to myself when he had gone, for I saw that I had imposed onhim. He thought I was half beside myself with fear. Evidently I hadan evil-smelling reputation. But I would soon change all that, Ithought, as I set to work to examine all the papers and possessions inthe rooms. I was engaged in this work when my other second arrived.He was named Ugo Gradinsk, and was a very different kind of man, andhad been a much more intimate friend. He had heard of my accident andhad come for news.
A glance at him filled me with instinctive disgust.
"What's up, Alexis?" was his greeting. "That prig Essaieff, has justtold me you're in a devil of a funny mood, and thinks you're about outof your mind with fear. What the devil have you done to yourself?" Hetouched his chin as he spoke.
"Can't I be shaved without setting you all cackling with curiosity? Ihad half my hair burnt off and shaved the other half." He started atmy surly tone and I saw in his eyes a reflection of the other man'sthoughts.
"D'ye think you'll be a smaller mark for Devinsky's sword? It's made adevil of a difference in your looks, I must say. And in your mannerstoo." I heard him mutter this last sentence into his moustache.
"Do you think I mean for an instant to allow that bully's sword totouch me?" I asked scowling angrily.
"Well, you thought so last night when I was giving you that wrinklewith the foils--and that was certainly why you got this infernal duelput off for a day."
"Ah, well, I've been fooling you, that's all," said I, shortly. "I'veplayed the fool long enough too, and I mean business. I've taken out apatent." I laughed grimly.
"What the devil d'ye mean? What patent?"
"A new sword stroke. The sabre stroke, I call it. Every first-rankswordsman has one," I cried boastfully.
"First-rank swordsman be hanged. Why, you can't hold a candle to me.And I would not stand before Devinsky's weapon for the promise of acolonelcy. Don't be an ass."
"My cut's with the flat of the sword across the face directly I'vedisarmed my man."
"And a devilish effective cut too no doubt--when you have disarmed him.But you'd better be making your will and putting your things in order,instead of talking this sort of swaggering rubbish to keep your courageup. You know jolly well that Devinsky means mischief; and what alwayshappens when he does. I don't want to frighten you, but hang it all,you know what he is."
"I'm going to pass the night in prayer," said I: and my visitor laughedboisterously at this.
"If you confess all we've done together, old man, you'll want a fullnight," he said.
"The prayers are for him, not for me," and at that he laughed moreboisterously than before: and he began to talk of a hundred dissipatedexperiences we had had together. I let him talk freely as it was partof my education, and he rattled on about such a number of shamefulthings that I was disgusted alike with him and with the beast I wassupposed to be. At length to my relief he stopped and asked me to goacross to the club for the last night.
I resolved to go, thinking that if I were in his company it would seemappropriate, and I wished to paint in more of the garish colours of mynew character among my fellow-officers. I made myself very offensivethe moment I was inside the place. I swaggered about the rooms with anassumption of insufferable insolence. Whenever I found a man lookingaskance at me--and this was frequent enough--I picked him out for somespecial insult. I spoke freely of the "miracle" that had happened tome, and the change that had been effected. I repeated my coarse sillyjest about praying all night for my antagonist: and I so behaved thatbefore I had been in the place an hour, I had laid the foundations ofenough quarrels to last me a month if I wished to have a meeting everymorning.
"Ah, he knows well enough he's going to die to-morrow morning," saidone man in my hearing. "It's no good challenging a man under sentenceof death," said another; while a number of others held to Essaieff'sview--that I was beside myself with fear, or drink, or both combined.I placed myself at the disposal of every man who had a word to say; butthe main answer I received was an expression of thanks that after thatnight I should trouble them no more.
I left the place, hugely pleased with the result of the night's work.I had created at a stroke a new part for Alexis Petrovitch: andprepared everyone to expect and think nothing of any fresheccentricities or further change they might observe in me in the future.
I reached my rooms in high spirits, and sat down to overhaul the placefor papers, and to learn something more of myself than I at presentknew.