Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

  There was no truth in Akulina’s statement that a thunder-storm was approaching. The stars shone clear and bright, high above the narrow street, and the solitary man looked up at them, and remembered other days and a freer life and a broader horizon; days when he had been younger than he was now, a life full of a healthier labour, a horizon boundless as that of the little street was limited. He thought, as he often thought when alone in the night, of his long journeys on horseback, driving great flocks of bleating sheep over endless steppes and wolds and expanses of pasture and meadow; he remembered the reddening of the sheep’s woolly coats in the evening sun, the quick change from gold to grey as the sun went down, the slow transition from twilight to night, the uncertain gait of his weary beast as the darkness closed in, the soft sound of the sheep huddling together, the bark of his dog, the sudden, leaping light of the camp-fire on the distant rising ground, the voices of greeting, the bubbling of the soup kettle, the grateful rest, the song of the wandering Tchumák — the pedlar and roving newsman of the Don. He remembered on holidays the wild racing and chasing and the sports in the saddle, the picking up of the tiny ten-kopek bit from the earth at a full gallop, the startling game in which a row of fearless Cossack girls join hands together, daring the best rider to break their rank with his plunging horse if he can, the mad laughter of the maidens, the snorting and rearing of the animal as he checks himself before the human wall that will not part to make way for him. All these things he recalled, the change of the seasons, the iron winter, the scorching summer, the glory of autumn and the freshness of spring. Born to such a liberty, he had fallen into the captivity of a common life; bred in the desert, he knew that his declining years would be spent in the eternal cutting of tobacco in the close air of a back shop; trained to the saddle, he spent his days seated motionless upon a wooden chair. The contrast was bitter enough, between the life he was meant to lead by nature, and the life he was made to lead by circumstances. And all this was the result in the first instant of a girl’s caprice, of her fancy for another man, so little different from himself that a Western woman could hardly have told the two apart. For this, he had left the steppe, had wandered westward to the Dnieper and southward to Odessa, northward again to Kiew, to Moscow, to Nizni-Novgorod, back again to Poland, to Krakau, to Prague, to Munich at last. Who could remember his wanderings, or trace the route of his endless journeyings? Not he himself, surely, any more than he could explain the gradual steps by which he had been transformed from a Don Cossack to a German tobacco-cutter in a cigarette manufactory.

  But his past life at least furnished him with memories, varied, changing, full of light and life and colour, wherewith to while away an hour’s watching in the night. Still he sat upon his doorstep, watching star after star as it slowly culminated over the narrow street and set, for him, behind the nearest house-top. He might have sat there till morning had he not been at last aware that some one was walking upon the opposite pavement.

  His quick ear caught the soft fall of an almost noiseless footstep and he could distinguish a shadow a little darker than the surrounding shade, moving quickly along the wall. He rose to his feet and crossed the street, not believing, indeed, that the newcomer could be the man he wanted, but anxious to be fully satisfied that he was not mistaken. He found himself face to face with a young girl, who stopped at the street door of the tobacconist’s house, just as he reached it. Her head was muffled in something dark and he could not distinguish her features. She started on seeing him, hesitated and then laid her hand upon the same knob which Schmidt had pulled so often in vain.

  “It is of no use to ring,” he said, quietly. “I have given it up.”

  “Herr Schmidt!” exclaimed the girl in evident delight. It was Vjera.

  “Yes — but, in Heaven’s name, Vjera, what are you doing here at this hour of the night? You ought to be at home and asleep.”

  “Oh, you have not heard the dreadful news,” cried poor Vjera in accents of distress. “Oh, if we cannot get in here, come with me, for the love of Heaven, and help me to get him out of that horrible place — oh, if you only knew what has happened!”

  “I know all about it, Vjera,” answered the Cossack. “That is the reason why I am here. I was with them when it happened and I ran off to get Fischelowitz. As ill luck would have it, he was out.”

  In a few words Schmidt explained the whole affair and told of his own efforts. Vjera was breathless with excitement and anxiety.

  “What is to be done? Dear Herr Schmidt! What is to be done?” She wrung her hands together and fixed her tearful eyes on his.

  “I am afraid that there is nothing to be done until morning—”

  “But there must be something, there shall be something done! They will drive him mad in that dreadful place — he is so proud and so sensitive — you do not know — the mere idea of being in prison—”

  “It is not so bad as that,” answered Schmidt, trying to reassure her. “They assured me that he was treated with every consideration, you know. Of course that means that he was not locked up like a common prisoner.”

  “Do you think so?” Vjera’s tone expressed no conviction in the matter.

  “Certainly. And it shows that he is not really suspected of anything serious — only, because Fischelowitz could not be found—”

  “But he is there — there in his house, asleep!” cried Vjera. “And we can wake him up — of course we can. He cannot be sleeping so soundly as not to hear if we ring hard. At least his wife will hear and look out of the window.”

  “I am afraid not. I have tried it.”

  But Vjera would not be discouraged and laid hold of the bell-handle again, pulling it out as far as it would come and letting it fly back again with a snap. The same results followed as when Schmidt had made the same attempt. There was a distant tinkling followed by total silence. Vjera repeated the operation.

  “You cannot do more than I have done,” said her companion, leaning his back against the door and watching her movements.

  “I ought to do more.”

  “Why, Vjera?”

  “Because he is more to me than to you or to any of the rest,” she answered in a low voice.

  “Do you mean to say that you love the Count?” inquired Schmidt, surprised beyond measure by the girl’s words and rendered thereby even more tactless than usual.

  But Vjera said nothing, having been already led into saying more than she had wished to say. She pulled the bell again.

  “I had never thought of that,” remarked the Cossack in a musing tone. “But he is mad, Vjera, the poor Count is mad. It is a pity that you should love a madman—”

  “O, don’t, Herr Schmidt — please don’t!” cried Vjera, imploring him to be silent as much with her eyes as with her voice.

  “No, but really,” continued the other, as though talking to himself, “there are things that go beyond all imagination in this world. Now, who would ever have thought of such a thing?”

  This time Vjera did not make any answer, nor repeat her request. But as she tugged with all her might at the brass handle, the Cossack heard a quick sob, and then another.

  “Poor Vjera!” he exclaimed kindly, and laying his hand on her shoulder. “Poor child! I am very sorry for you, poor Vjera — I would do anything to help you, indeed I would — if I only knew what it should be.”

  “Then help me to wake up Fischelowitz,” answered the girl in a shaken voice. “I am sure he is at home at this time—”

  “I have done all I can. If he will not wake, he will not. Or if he is awake he will not put his head out of the window, which is much the same thing so far as we are concerned. By the bye, Vjera, you have not told me how you came to hear of the row. It is queer that you should have heard of it—”

  “Herr Homolka — you know, my landlord — had seen the Count go by with the Gigerl and the policemen. He asked some one in the crowd and learned the story. But it was late when he came home, and he told us — I was sitting up sewing with his wif
e — and then I ran here. But do please help me — we can do something, I am sure.”

  “I do not see what, short of climbing up the flat walls of the house. But I am not a lizard, you know.”

  “We might call. Perhaps they would hear our voices if we called together,” suggested Vjera, drawing back into the middle of the street and looking up at the closed windows of the third story.

  “Herr Fischelowitz!” she cried, in a shrill, weak tone that seemed to find no echo in the still air.

  “Herr Fischelowitz, Fischelowitz, Fischelowitz!” bawled the Cossack, taking up the idea and putting it into very effective execution. His brazen voice, harsh and high, almost made the windows rattle.

  “Somebody will hear that,” he observed and cleared his throat for another effort.

  A number of persons heard it, and at the first repetition of the yell, two or three windows were angrily opened. A head in a white nightcap looked out from the first story.

  “What do you want at this hour of the night?” asked the owner of the nightcap, already in a rage.

  “I want Herr Fischelowitz, who lives in this house,” answered the Cossack, firmly.

  “Do you live here? Are you shut out?”

  “No — we only want—”

  “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 muffled head bent forward and her whole attitude 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 titles 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 association 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 passing 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!”