Chapter 29

ALBAN RETURNS TO LONDON

They returned to the great courtyard, but not to Zaniloff's room as the promise had been. Here by the gates there stood a passable private carriage, and into this Alban perceived that he was to be hustled. The bestarred transcriber of the upper story, he who waged the battle of the flies, now stood by the carriage door and appeared to be ill at ease. Evidently his study of strange tongues still troubled him.

"Pardon, mein Herr--how in English--khorosho?" he asked very deferentially.

"It means 'that's all right,' sir." Alban answered immediately.

"It means that,--ah, nitchevo--je ne m'en souviens jamais."

He held the door open and Alban entered the carriage without a word. Apparently they still waited for someone and five minutes passed and found their attitudes unchanged. Then Zaniloff himself appeared full of bustle and business but in a temper modified toward concession.

"I am taking you back to your hotel, mein Herr," he said to Alban, "it is the Governor's order. You will leave Warsaw to-night. Those are our instructions."

He sank back in the cushions and the great gates were shut behind them with a sonorous clang. Out in the streets the outbreak of the earlier hours had been a veritable battle but was now a truce. The whole city seemed to be swarming with troops. Well might Zaniloff think of other things.

"Is the Count better, sir?" Alban ventured presently.

"He will live," was the dry response, "at least the doctors say so."

"And you have discovered the truth about the affair?"

"The man who attacked him was shot on the Rymarska half an hour ago."

"Then that is why you are taking me back to my hotel?"

"There is positively no other reason," said the Chief.

The statement was frank to the point of brutality, but it carried also such a message of hope that Alban hardly dared to repeat the words of it even to himself; there was no longer any possibility of a capital charge against the child he had just left in the wretched stable. Let the other facts be as they might, these people could not detain Lois Boriskoff upon the Count's affair or add it to the dossier in which her father's offences were narrated. Of this Zaniloff's tone convinced him. "He would never have admitted it at all if Lois were compromised," the argument ran, and was worthy of the wise head which arrived at it.

"I am glad that you have found the man," he explained presently, "it clears up so much and must be very satisfactory. Would you have any objection to telling me what you are going to do with the girl I have just left?"

Zaniloff smiled.

"I have no objection at all. When the Ministry at St. Petersburg condescends to inform me, you shall share my information. At present I am going to keep her under lock and key, and if she is obstinate I am going to flog her."

"Do the people at St. Petersburg wish you to do that?"

"I do not consult their feelings," was the curt reply.

They fell to silence once more and the carriage rolled on through the busy streets. It had escaped Alban's notice hitherto, that an escort of Cossacks accompanied them, but as they turned into the great avenue he caught a glimpse of bright accoutrements and of horsemen going at a gentle canter. The avenue itself was almost deserted save by the ever-present infantry who lined its walks as though some great cavalcade were to pass. When they had gone another hundred paces, the need for the presence of the soldiers declared itself in a heap of blackened ruins and a great fire still smouldering. Zaniloff smiled grimly when they passed the place.

"Half an hour ago that was the palace of my namesake, the Grand Duke Sergius," he said, almost as though the intelligence were a matter of personal satisfaction to him.

Alban looked at the smouldering ruins and could not help remembering the strange threats he had heard in Union Street on the very eve of his departure from England. Had any of the old mad orators a hand in this? Those wild figures of the platforms and the slums, had they achieved so much, if indeed it were achievement at all?

"They are fools to make war upon bricks and mortar," Zaniloff remarked in his old quiet way.

"I told them so in London, sir."

"You told them; do you enjoy the honor of their acquaintance then?"

"I know as much about them as any of your people, and that is saying a good deal. They are very ignorant men who are suffering great wrongs. If your government would make an effort to learn what the world is thinking about to-day, you would soon end all this. But you will never do it by the whip, and guns will not help you."

Zaniloff laid a hand upon his shoulder almost in a kindly way.

"My honor alone forbids me to believe that," he exclaimed.

They arrived at the hotel while he spoke and passed immediately to the private apartments above. A brief intimation that Alban must consider himself still a prisoner and not leave his rooms under any circumstances, whatever, found a ready acquiescence from one who had heard an echo in Lois' words of his own farewell to Russia. That the authorities would detain him he did not believe, and he knew that his long task was not here. He must return to England and save Lois. How or by what means he could not say; for the ultimate threat, so lightly spoken, affrighted him when he was alone and left him a coward. How, indeed, if he went to the fanatics of Union Street and said to them,--"Richard Gessner is your enemy; strike at him." There would be vengeance surely, but he had received too many kindnesses at Hampstead that he should contemplate such an infamy. And what other course lay before him? He could not say, his life seemed lived. Neither ambition nor desire, apart from the prison he had left, remained to him.

The French valet Malette waited upon him in his rooms and gave him such news of the Count as the sentinels of the sick-room permitted. Oh, yes, his excellency was a little better. He had spoken a few words and asked for his English friend. Nothing was known of the madman who struck him save that which the papers in his pocket told them. The fellow had been shot as he left the Grand Duke's palace; some thought that he had been formerly in the Count's service and that this was merely an act of vengeance, _mais terrible_, as Malette added with emphasis. Later on his excellency would be able to tell the story for himself. His grand constitution had meant very much to him to-day.

The interview took place at three o'clock in the afternoon, the doctors having left their patient, and the perplexed Zaniloff being again at the prison. The bed had now been wheeled a little way from the window and the room set in pleasant order by clever and willing hands. The Count himself had lost none of his courage. The attack in truth had nerved him to believe that he had nothing further to fear in Warsaw, for who would think about a man already as good as buried by the newspapers. Here was something to help the surgeons and bring some little flush of color to the patient's pallid cheeks. He spoke as a man who had been through the valley of the shadow and had suffered little inconvenience by the journey.

"I am forbidden to talk," he said to Alban, and immediately began to talk in defiance of a nurse's protests.

"So you have been to prison, mon vieux; well, it is so much experience for you, and experience is useful. I have done a good morning's work, as you see. Imagine it. I open my door to a policeman, and when I ask him what he has got for me, he whips out a butcher's knife and makes a thrust at my ribs. Happily for me, I come from a bony race. The surgeons have now gone to fight a duel about it. One is for septic pneumonia, the other for the removal of the lungs. I shall be out of Poland in my beautiful France by the time they agree."

He flushed with the exertion and cast reproachful eyes upon the nurse who stood up to forbid his further eloquence. Alban, in turn, began to tell him of the adventure of the morning.

"It was a Jack and Jill business, except that Jill does not come tumbling after," he said. "What is going to happen I cannot tell you. Lois will not leave Poland until her father is released, and I have it from her that he never will be released. Don't you see, Count, that Mr. Gessner is a fool to play with fire like this. Does he believe that this secret will be kept because these two are in prison? I know that it will not. If he is to be saved, it must be by generosity and courage. I should have thought he would have known it from the beginning. Let him act fairly by old Paul Boriskoff and I will answer for his safety. If he does not do so, he must blame himself for the consequences."

"Pride never blames itself, Kennedy, even when it is foolish. I like your wisdom and shall give a good account of it. Of course, there is the other side of the picture, and that is not very pretty. How can we answer for the man, even if he be generously dealt with? More important still, how can we answer for the woman?"

"I will answer for her, Count."

"You, my dear boy. How can you do that?"

"By making her my wife."

"Do you say this seriously?"

"I say it seriously."

"But why not at Hampstead before we left England. That would have made it easier for us all."

"I would try to tell you, but you would not understand. Perhaps I did not know then what I know now. There are some things which we only learn with difficulty, lessons which it needs suffering to teach us."

A sharp spasm, almost of pain, crossed the Count's face.

"That is very true," he exclaimed, "please do not think I am deficient in understanding. It has been necessary for you to come to Poland to discover where your happiness lay?"

"Yes, it has been necessary."

"Do you understand, that this would mean the termination of your good understanding with my friend Gessner. You could not remain in his house naturally."

"I have thought of that. It will be necessary for me to leave him as you say. But I have been an interloper from the beginning, and I do not see how I could have remained. While everything was new to me, while I lived in Wonderland, I never gave much thought to it; but here when I begin to think, I am no longer in doubt. How could I shut myself up in a citadel of riches and know that so many of my poor people were starving not ten miles from my door. I would feel as though I had gone into the enemy's camp and sold myself for the gratification of a few silly desires and a whole pantomime of show which a decent man must laugh at. It is better for me to have done with it once and for all and try to get my own living. Lois will give me the right to work, if she ever wins her liberty, which I doubt. You could help her to do so, if you were willing, Count."

"I, what influence have I?"

"As much as any man in Poland, I should say."

"Ah, you appeal to my vanity. I wish it could respond. Frankly, my Government will be little inclined to clemency, just now at any rate. Why should it be? These people are burning down our houses, why should we help them to build their own? Your old friend Boriskoff was as dangerous a man as any in Poland, why should they let him go just because an English banker wishes it."

"They will let him go because he is more dangerous in prison than out of it. In London I could answer for him. I could not answer while he is at Petersburg."

"My dear lad, we must really make you Master of all these pretty ceremonies. I'll speak to Zaniloff." He laughed lightly, for the idea of this mere stripling being of any use to his Government amused him greatly. His apologies for the indulgence, however, were not to be spoken, for the blood suddenly rushed from his cheeks, and the good nurse intervened in some alarm.

"Please to leave him," she said to Alban in French. He obeyed her immediately, seeing that he had been wrong to stay so long.

"I will come again when you permit me. Please let me know when his excellency is better."

She promised him that she would do so, and he returned to his own rooms. He was not, however, to see the Count again until he met him many years afterwards in Paris. The distressed Zaniloff himself carried the amazing news, some two hours later.

"You are to leave for London by the evening mail," the Chief said shortly, "a berth has been reserved for you, and I myself will see you into the train. Do not complain of us, Mr. Kennedy. I can assure you that there are many cities more agreeable than Warsaw at the present moment."

Alban was not surprised, nor would he argue upon it. He realized that his labors in Poland had been in vain. If he could save Lois from the prison, he must do so in London, in the alleys and dens he had so long deserted. Not toward Wonderland, not at the shrines of riches, but as an exile returned to labor with the humblest, must this journey carry him.

And he bowed his head to destiny and believed that he stood alone against the world.