Mr. Tooke’s studious face had become very grave. ‘As to your marriage, there is nought to be done on that score; and whether I bless your union or not, you are already tied. In the other matter you have my profound sympathy; but, you will remember, when you first called upon me, I warned you that I could give you no assistance which might contravene the duty that I owe Her Majesty.’
‘Please!’ Roger pleaded. ‘Even if you cannot square it with your conscience to give me your active help, I implore you, Sir, advise me as to if there are any steps which I can take that might lead to my evading this sentence of banishment.’
‘If Her Majesty has not set a period upon your exile it may not prove of long duration. Her clemency in such matters is well-known. Even in the case of Elizaveta Romanovna Vorontzoff, who endeavoured to have her repudiated and imprisoned, so as to take her place as the wife of Peter the third the Empress showed extraordinary leniency. No great time after the Czar’s death she allowed her rival to return to court and marry Admiral Paliansky. So ’tis unlikely that your enforced absence will last more than a year or two.’
‘A year or two!’ groaned Roger, who saw the one chance upon which he had been able to buoy up his hopes during the past few hours slipping away. ‘In my situation that is near as bad as a lifetime.’
‘You will not think so when you reach my age,’ the cleryman endeavoured to console him.
Roger knew that once he reached Siberia he would find few people who could even speak any language that he understood, and that the difficulties of making his way to a frontier without being stopped and sent back would be immense. He was convinced that his only hope of getting out of Russia with any speed lay in the next night and day, while he was still in the vicinity of the Gulf of Finland; and that Mr. Tooke, with his great knowledge of the country, must be able to suggest some means of escape if only he could be persuaded to do so.
Making a great effort to control his agitation, he said gravely: ‘I do not ask this for myself, Sir, but in the name of those I represent. I have news of great import which I must convey to certain people as a matter of the utmost urgency. I propose to use the excuse of going through a Protestant ceremony to wait upon you with my wife, at your church, at eleven o’clock tomorrow morning. You will then have an opportunity of passing a message to me. I beg you to reconsider the matter, and aid me if you can.’
Without waiting for an answer he turned away to talk to some other guests. He felt very badly about having forced the friendly clergyman to choose between two loyalties, and he could be by no means certain that the choice would prove to his advantage; but he considered that his knowledge of the Danish plan of campaign justified his action.
By this time Roger was heartily sick of making smiling small talk to people, the great majority of whom he had never seen before and had not the slightest wish ever to see again; but, as the hero of the hour, he was the cynosure of all eyes and had to pretend that this was the happiest day of his life. Concealing his gloomy thoughts as best he could, he prayed for his ordeal to end, although he knew that it might continue for hours yet, as on their country estates the Russians often kept wedding festivities up for a week.
His forebodings that he would not escape being lionised until he could get to bed were made a certainty when, a little before six, an orchestra appeared and began to tune up. Evidently the Empress meant there to be no hint that the marriage had been anything but of her own contriving, and had sent the band to ensure that there should be no flagging of the entertainment owing to the delayed departure of the newly-wed couple. With jaws that ached from smiling, Roger duly opened the ball by leading Natalia Andreovna out for the first minuet and their gracefulness in the dance was much applauded.
Dancing continued till half-past ten, then Natalia’s bridesmaids formed a bevy round her and prepared to escort her to her chamber. Among the guests there was much disappointment that the bride and bridegroom were not to be put to bed in public, as was the custom, and that they were thus deprived of the opportunity of making the bawdy jokes usual on such occasions; but the Empress’s dictum, that Natalia must not consider herself fully a wife until after the Protestant ceremony which her husband had requested, was now known to all, so they could do no more than commiserate with her.
As Roger had not been alone with her for a single moment during all these hours they had had no opportunity of exchanging anything but the amiable civilities required by the occasion, and exhausted as he was by the events of the day, he was by no means sorry that he was to be spared an explanation with her that night. Having smilingly kissed her hand, forehead and cheeks he wished her good sleep, and with considerable relief, watched her being led away by her companions.
Throughout the whole afternoon and evening he had rarely been without a glass in his hand, and the drinkings of his health to which he had had to respond had been innumerable; so had it not been for his excellent head he would have been drunk already. As it was a little crowd of his newly acquired in-laws now gathered round him, and insisting that it would be against all custom for him to go to bed sober, plied him with further liquor.
Wishing to be rid of them as soon as possible he tossed off several brandies to Natalia’s green eyes, then pretended a greater degree of drunkenness than he was actually feeling. Seeing his apparent state his two old acquaintances of the Chevalier guard presented themselves, and after many noisy good-nights had been said, escorted him to the room from which they had brought him nearly twelve hours earlier.
Alone at last, he sat with his head in his hands for a few minutes; then with an effort stood up, splashed his face with water from the jug, struggled out of his clothes and flung himself into bed. Fatigue even more than the amount he had drunk weighed upon his brain, and after a brief period of futile speculation as to whether or not Mr. Tooke would devise a means to pull him out of the frightful mess he was in, he fell asleep.
In the morning the two footmen called him at seven and brought his breakfast. When he had eaten it one of them told him that a carriage had been ordered for nine o’clock to take him into St. Petersburg; so he got up, dressed in his travelling-clothes, and unlocking his money chest, distributed all the cash he had about him. By the time he had finished repacking his other belongings it was close on nine; a knock came on the door, and in reply to his call of ‘Entrez!’ the two Chevalier guards appeared.
Giving him a polite good-morning, they asked if they might have the pleasure of attending him to his second marriage ceremony.
Roger was somewhat surprised at their couching their proposal to accompany him in the form of a request, as he had a shrewd suspicion that the two young men were among the few people who knew that he had incurred the Empress’s displeasure, and that she had ordered them to keep an eye on him. In any case he did not feel that he was in a position to refuse their offer, so he accepted with a good grace and went downstairs with them.
He had expected that he and Natalia would be sent in to St. Petersburg together, and that he would at last be called on to face a tête-à-tête with his wife; but it transpired that she was to follow him in a separate carriage with two of the ladies who had attended her the previous day. So Roger and his companions got into a four-horse barouche, and at a spanking pace set out to cover the sixteen miles to the capital.
Having as yet not the faintest idea as to the procedure adopted towards people exiled to Siberia, Roger thought this a good opportunity to secure some information on it, so he remarked:
‘I little expected, gentlemen, when you brought me from the Fortress of Schlüsselburg four days ago, that I should leave the Peterhof in such pleasant circumstances. It seemed far more likely that I should leave it but to be conveyed back to my cell, or as a prisoner on his way to exile.’
Having waited for their laugh, he went on: ‘Had the latter proved my fate I take it that you would hardly have been put to the inconvenience of escorting me further than Petersburg, and that there you would have handed me over to the police fo
r transportation to Siberia.’
They both looked at him in surprise, and the taller of the two answered. ‘You are mistaken, Sir. None but felons and people of the baser sort, sentenced to work in the mines, are transported thither by the police. Persons of quality are simply ordered by the Empress to take up their residence there in a specific place, or, more generally, in a town of their own choosing; they then make their own arrangements for the journey.’
This was the best news Roger had had since his return from Finland. Apparently it meant that, if Mr. Tooke remained adamant in his refusal to help, once he was clear of St. Petersburg he would be able to change his course and drive hell-for-leather for the Polish or Austrian frontier. Concealing his elation, he said:
‘In that case what surety has Her Majesty that those she banishes will ever go to Siberia? It seems that, without her knowledge, they might quite well take another direction and go into comfortable retirement on some country estate.’
The tall man shook his head. ‘For a Russian to even contemplate disobeying a direct order from Her Majesty is unthinkable.’
‘But in the case of a foreigner, such as myself,’ Roger hazarded.
‘You would soon be brought to book,’ laughed his informant. ‘The chief of police in every town and district keeps a record of all persons entering or leaving the area for which he is responsible, and these reports are forwarded to the Residence. Were your name not found upon them as travelling in the right direction an inquiry would be set on foot, and ’tis no easy matter for persons of quality to hide themselves in Russia; so you would soon be located and arrested to suffer a severer penalty.’
With that Roger had to be content for the time being, but he felt that his prospects of devising some means of getting out of the country were considerably brighter than he had thought them the previous day. He therefore led the talk into other channels, and a little before eleven, they arrived at the English Factory.
To his surprise a stream of people, mostly dressed in sober black, was crossing the main courtyard, and entering the church. A few equipages were setting down richly-clad Russians, some of whom he recognised as relatives of Natalia’s to whom he had been introduced the day before, but the bulk of the little crowd had a curiously home-like, British look; and only then did he realise that it was Sunday morning. His recent experiences had made him lose count of the days, but evidently Mr. Tooke’s usual congregation were assembling for the Sabbath service, so he assumed that his wedding-ceremony would not take place until after it.
The Reverend William was waiting in the porch to receive him, and Roger anxiously scanned his face, hoping for a sign that he had decided to help him in some way; but the clergyman’s expression was blankly courteous as he asked Roger and his companions to go in and seat themselves in the front pew on the right. A few minutes after they had taken their places, Natalia Andreovna, dressed ready for a journey, arrived with her bridesmaids and they filed into the opposite pew. The service then commenced.
By contrast to that of the previous day it was the essence of simple, genuine worship, and it made Roger homesick to a degree that he found almost unbearable. The English voices, the hymns and psalms, all brought back to him with poignant clarity the services he had attended with such regularity during his boyhood in Lymington at the old parish church of St. Thomas Becket. When he closed his eyes in prayer he could so easily imagine himself back there again, but on opening them one sideways glance showed him Natalia’s beautiful, wicked profile barely a yard away across the aisle. More than once he was seized with the impulse to spring to his feet and shout aloud that he would not marry her, but he knew that it was too late, the deed was already done.
Mr. Tooke preached upon resignation to the will of the Lord. Roger felt sure that the text had been chosen for his benefit, and that the good man was urging him both to make the best of the marriage into which he had entered so unwillingly and to accept with becoming humility the banishment decreed for him. It was certainly not a good augury that Mr. Tooke had any intention of suggesting a means by which he could escape, and it plunged Roger into further depths of gloom.
At the conclusion of the service Mr. Tooke announced the marriage and that any of the congregation who wished to remain as witnesses to it were welcome to do so. Roger and Natalia then took their places and were united according to the rites of the Church of England; after which Mr. Tooke addressed them briefly in a low voice, in French.
He said that they had met and married in what was to Roger a land distant both in thought and customs from his own, and that in the course of time Natalia might be called on to follow her husband to a country which she would find strange and different from that of her birth. Moreover he believed there was some reason to suppose that their union had been brought about with little time for the deep consideration that such a step merited, and in unusual circumstances. But that they should never allow such extraneous matters to impair their acceptance of the cardinal fact that, for better or for worse, they had been joined together in the sight of God. Now that they were wed they must consider themselves as one, each giving way to the other’s prejudices as often as they could bring themselves to do so, and abiding loyally by the solemn vows they had taken to love and cherish one another.
Natalia cried openly during this short address, and Roger was deeply moved. It brought home to him as nothing else yet had done the full implications of the step he had taken. That he had been forced to it now seemed beside the point, as was also the unlovely vicious streak in Natalia’s nature. Apparently she could not help the delight which seized her at the thought or sight of physical brutality, and since their arrival in Russia she had given ample proof that she had conceived a deep passion for him. She was beautiful, rich, vivacious and unfailingly interesting to talk to. Most men, he knew, would consider themselves fortunate to have won such a bride.
Suddenly, he saw the whole issue in a new light. It was borne in upon him that no possible good could come of his continuing to regard his marriage as a trap into which he had fallen. He must accept it as the will of God and follow Mr. Tooke’s wise counsel.
There and then he determined both to make every effort to eradicate Natalia’s love of cruelty, and to treat her with all the generosity and kindness of which he was capable. Looking at her tear-stained but radiant face as they left the altar, he felt that if he acted on this new resolution, their strange marriage could yet be made a success and that he might come truly to love her.
Followed by their relations and friends they went to the vestry, and while everyone else was watching Natalia sign the register Mr. Tooke slipped a small, three-cornered note unobserved into Roger’s hand. In view of the sermon on resignation to which he had just listened he was hard put to it to conceal his surprise, but the emotion was swiftly overcome by acute impatience to read it and learn if the clergyman had, after all, devised some means by which he might evade having to set out for Siberia.
His gloves were out of sight in the pocket of his travelling-coat, so exclaiming that he must have left them in the pew, he hurried back into the now empty church. Opening the note with trembling fingers, he read:
The brig White Rose out of Hull, Captain Tommy Bell, is lying at the timber-wharf and is due to sail for home a few days hence. I have spoken with Mr. Bell, who tells me that he could accommodate two passengers, and I have arranged with him to expect you aboard some time tonight.
Roger could have jumped for joy. Coming immediately after the familiar service, the English voices and the sight of the sturdy independent-looking congregation, the very words ‘White Rose—Hull—Tommy Bell’ held a magic ring; they seemed to epitomise British courage, honesty and freedom, and at the same time to conjure up so many gentle decencies of life that he had found totally lacking in Russia.
Thrusting the note into an inner pocket, he hurried back to the vestry, to find that Mr. Tooke had just invited the company to adjourn to the parsonage and join him and his wife in a glass of wine. Upsta
irs in the pleasant drawing-room Roger paid his respects to Mrs. Tooke, and, a few minutes later, managed to get a word in private with her husband. Having thanked the clergyman from the bottom of his heart he spoke to him of Zaria and asked him to take charge of her when she came out of hospital. On Mr. Tooke agreeing, he wrote a brief note making the little serf over to him, and added to it a gold Imperial as a present for her. Then, happy in the thought that he had at one stroke made a useful gift to the man who had helped him and assured the girl a good home, he rejoined Natalia.
‘We must not long delay our setting out, my love,’ she smiled, as he came up to her, ‘for we have far to go before night.’
Some of her friends who were standing nearby then rallied him on his impatience to carry her off, and said that he might at least have allowed her one night in St. Petersburg.
Knowing the secret reason which lay behind their starting at once he laughed the matter off; but he still had no idea what arrangements had been made for their journey until, on going downstairs, he saw two heavy travelling-coaches drawn up outside.
The first was for the bridal pair and was almost as commodious as a caravan; its wide seats pulled down to form sleeping-bunks and in addition to a great pile of fur rugs it contained most of their personal belongings. In the second were to ride a maid for her and a valet for him; from its boot protruded the chimney of a small field-kitchen and a good part of its interior was occupied by cases containing food and wine.
The good-byes were said, they took their seats, and the heavy coaches rumbled out of the yard. For the first time since their wedding, some twenty-six hours before, he was alone with his wife.
True to his decision taken in the church he put his arm round her, drew her head down on to his shoulder, and kissed her.
She nestled against him, and after a moment murmured:
‘How prodigious strange it is that, whereas a week ago, I should never have dared to ask the consent of my family or the Empress to marry an untitled gentleman like yourself, we should now find ourselves wed by her decree. ’Tis hard that, having been generous enough to give you to me, she should have driven us away from most of the things that make life worth living. But we have one another, and our exile may not be of long duration; so, all things considered, we should count ourselves monstrous fortunate.’
The Shadow of Tyburn Tree Page 45