Part 8

Colonel Orloff was something in character like the famous Count Fersen, the admirer and devoted friend of Marie Antoinette. He, too, had conceived a passion for his Sovereign, in whom he only saw the unfortunate, ill-treated, and misunderstood woman, and he conceived the thought to sacrifice everything for her service, to try and save her from the perils with which he saw her surrounded. And gradually, when his relations with her became more real and intimate, he, too, began to speak to her in the same sense as Anna Wyrubewa had done, of the necessity of trying to reconcile herself with her husband so as to be able to bring into the world that Heir after whom the whole of Russia had been longing for the last nine years or so.

One day Madame Wyrubewa, whether accidentally or intentionally, left the Colonel alone with the Czarina. He saw his opportunity, and began more seriously than he had ever done before to implore her to make an effort to save herself. The young man grew quite eloquent, until Alexandra, moved beyond words, started weeping in real earnest and asked him how he could suggest the possibility of a reconciliation between her and the Czar, in view of his own feelings for her, the nature of which she had guessed for some time. To her surprise, the Colonel fell on his knees before her and told her that it was because of these very feelings that he had felt himself justified in speaking to her as he had done. He was nothing beside her, and all he could do was to worship her from afar, and to try to come to her help, both for her own sake and for that of their country, that required from them both the supreme sacrifice he was asking of her. For once the cold and haughty Czarina was startled out of her usual indifference, and when they parted she had promised her devoted knight and admirer that, though she might not make an effort to win back the love of her husband, yet she would not repulse him, as she had done lately, if he made any attempt to return to her. She promised that on the love she owned to him that she felt for him, and on that of the one which they both had for this great Russia, which Orloff had never forgotten even amid the fervor of his passion. When Madame Wyrubewa came back to the room where she had left her two friends, she saw that something had happened, but she was far too clever to question them, and when the Empress said it was time for her to go home she simply offered to accompany her, hoping that something might be told to her during their walk back to the Palace. For once Alexandra was silent, and parted from Anna without betraying anything of what had passed during that half-hour when she had been left alone with the first man who had aroused some interest in her otherwise impassible heart.

Colonel Orloff was not so discreet, in the sense that he related to his friend all that had taken place between him and the Czarina--related it with such agitation and poignant regret that she saw at once that she was in the presence of a feeling capable of driving the man who was under its influence to any heights of personal sacrifice. She then communicated to him a plan out of which she hoped to find the solution of the troubles against which the Empress was struggling so bravely, but apparently so uselessly. It was a daring plan and it required much daring to accomplish it; but the future of the woman they both loved was at stake, and she thought they ought to risk it.

Nicholas II. was fond of Colonel Orloff, whom he had recently appointed one of his aides-de-camp. The Sovereign liked from time to time to go and dine or have supper at the mess of some regiment or other of the Guards, either at Tsarskoye Selo, Peterhof, or St. Petersburg. These entertainments used to last generally into the small hours of the morning, and ill-natured people said that the Czar when in this company of young men, which was more congenial to him than the one he was compelled to see generally, allowed himself to have more glasses of wine than were good for him, and to indulge in subjects of conversation he would have done better to avoid. Whether this was true or not, it is of course difficult to say, but the fact remains that Nicholas liked these “family festivities,” as he used to call them, and that he always returned home in a good temper after having attended them. Colonel Orloff was aware of this weakness of the Sovereign, and one day he proposed to him to go and hear some regimental singers at the mess of his own Lancer regiment, stationed at Peterhof, the same regiment of which the Empress was Colonel-in-chief. Nicholas II. consented and a day was fixed. On the morning of that day Colonel Orloff sought Madame Wyrubewa; the two had a long conversation, the result of which was their reading together a certain page in French history relating how Louis XIII. had been compelled to seek the hospitality of his wife, Anne of Austria, on a stormy night when it had not been possible for him to return from Paris to St.-Germain, where he resided, an incident that had had world-wide consequences in the birth of the child who was to become in time Louis XIV. After that the Colonel returned to the Palace, where he was on duty that day, and his friend went to seek the Empress and to try to induce her to lend a helping hand to the plot which they had both engineered.

The supper took place, and it was nearly dawn when the Czar left the mess of the Lancers of the Guard, where he declared that he had spent a most pleasant evening. He drove in a motor-car back to Tsarskoye Selo in a very enjoyable frame of mind, which did not require the encouragement of his aide-de-camp, who sat next to him, to become a boisterous one. Lots of champagne had been drunk during the meal, and even after, and when some one in the gay assembly had ventured to say that the only pity of the whole thing was that no representatives of the fair sex had been invited to enliven the party with their presence, Nicholas II. had heartily echoed the regret expressed by the officer in question. Orloff, when alone with the Sovereign, had very cleverly turned the conversation into the same channel, and at last had wormed out of his Imperial Master the confession that he was very unhappy at the extreme coldness of character of his Consort, whose beauty he admired just as much as on the day he had married her. The Colonel, upon this, had ventured to express the conviction that this coldness was only assumed, and proceeded perhaps from jealousy more than from anything else. When at last Tsarskoye Selo was reached, instead of accompanying Nicholas to his own apartments, as it was part of his duties to do, he brought him to the door of the Empress’s room, which he opened and closed upon him.

The next day a pale and haggard woman appeared in Anna Wyrubewa’s house, coming to seek consolation in what she considered an overwhelming misfortune, and while she was sobbing out the agony of her soul with her head hidden in her friend’s lap, a strong man who had borne many a misfortune without flinching, and who had stood calm and unmoved while his heart had been breaking, was sitting alone in his room, his head hidden in his hands, and hot tears dropping one by one between his fingers on the table over which he was leaning, in his overwhelming despair.

XII

LOVED AT LAST

After a storm there comes, generally, so they say, at least, a great calm. And in a certain sense this happened in regard to the troubled mind of the Empress Alexandra. As time went on, she recognized the value of the good advice which she had received from Madame Wyrubewa as well as from Colonel Orloff. Her relations with the Czar, which had been more than strained for long months, became gradually better when she could at last tell him that she had once again, and this time without any mistake, the hope of giving him the Heir for which they had been longing. She saw his former confidence in her return, together with his affection; an affection to which she did not perhaps respond, but which she nevertheless appreciated, perhaps because she was told she ought to do so.

The fact was that her two friends were doing their best to get her to take a healthier view of her own position than had been the case until then. Intrigues at the Court were getting worse and worse, as the various events which finally brought about the Japanese war were slowly unfolding themselves, and it became every day more important for the security of the Empress that she should not disinterest herself from all that was going on around her, as had been her wont, since she had allowed disappointment and sorrow to overpower her.

It was an anxious and a critical time for the dynasty as well as for the country that was coming on, and Anna Wyrubewa with her clear mind was very well aware that such was the case. She used to hear all the gossip in the various circles of St. Petersburg society, and she knew very well that a war was wished for by the enemies of the existing order of things. They saw in it the possibility of overthrowing the dynasty, as the mistakes inevitable in dealing with such a corrupt administration as the Russian one would appear in a new, bold light before the horrified eyes of the public. She was also perfectly aware of the growing unpopularity of Nicholas II., and of the way in which he was daily losing what still remained of the former short-lived affection his subjects had felt for him. She would have liked the Empress to assert herself, and to claim as her right to be initiated in what was going on in the domain of public affairs, but it was still too early for Alexandra to avail herself of this advice. The Czarina did not feel sure of her ground as yet, and she only replied to her friend’s adjurations that, if she were lucky enough to give birth to a son, she would follow her advice to the letter; in the mean while she felt afraid of being snubbed by the Emperor, who, though he treated her with far more consideration than he had done for a long time, still kept her in total ignorance of all questions relating to the affairs of the State. On the other hand, he did not hesitate to discuss them with his mother, the Dowager Empress, and even occasionally with his sisters and his brother-in-law, the Grand-Duke Alexander Michaylovitch, who had always been his great friend and favorite.

The delicate condition of health of Alexandra Feodorowna furnished her with the pretext she required to isolate herself more than ever from her family, and she used to spend long hours with Madame Wyrubewa in the latter’s small house, and whenever she went there she met, as if accidentally, Colonel Orloff, whose faithful, devoted eyes followed her with a love which she could not have helped noticing, even if she had not been aware of its existence. She was a woman gifted with a very pure mind, given to idealize the people she cared for and her own feelings in regard to them. She soon grew to think of the young officer as of a kind of guardian angel sent by Providence to help her in the various difficulties of her daily existence, and with a selfishness almost touching in its unconsciousness she took to confiding to him her various doubts and perplexities, and to initiate him into all the details of her married life, together with the constant disgust and struggles which attended it, not suspecting that by doing so she was breaking the heart of this one faithful friend who had sacrificed himself so entirely to her welfare.

In the mean while events had been rapidly unfolding themselves. The war with Japan had begun and was progressing, together with its long series of appalling disasters coming one on top of the other. Mukden had been fought, the _Pétropawlosk_ had gone down in the waves of the Pacific, with brave Admiral Makharoff and its whole crew of officers and men, and the catastrophe of Tsu Shima had also taken place. These had been met by the utter indifference of Nicholas II., who had not even thought it worth while to interrupt the game of tennis he had been playing when the telegram with the news of this unprecedented misfortune had been brought to him. In the interior of the country trouble was also brewing. The Grand-Duke Sergius, the uncle of the Czar and the husband of the Empress’s eldest sister, Elisabeth, had fallen under the bomb of an assassin in Moscow, and the famous Minister of the Interior, Von Plehwe, whose very name was a horror to all the liberal elements in the land, had met with the same fate.

It was evident that grave events were at hand, and that unless something was attempted to meet them the very foundations of the Throne might come to be shaken by this rising tide of discontent which threatened to engulf the dynasty in its waves. It was high time something were done, and that some one should interfere to save Nicholas II. from impending calamity. Who could do so better than his wife and the mother of his children? Thus reasoned Anna Wyrubewa, and it was also what her friend, Colonel Orloff, thought; but that was not at all what was wished by the various other forces at work trying to dictate to the weak-minded Czar the conduct he ought to hold in the presence of these unexpected difficulties with which he found himself confronted, to his dismay and surprise. There had got about among the public an inkling as to the possibility of the Empress becoming all at once a factor to be reckoned with in the general situation. Immediately the efforts of all her enemies became concentrated on that one point--how best to eliminate this new element, which they understood but too well would necessarily counteract their own influence.

A careful watch was set on the person and the conduct of the young Sovereign. It did not bring any of the hoped-for results, because both Anna Wyrubewa and Colonel Orloff were prudent people, who contrived to arrange matters in such a way, that no one suspected they used to see Alexandra Feodorowna every day, and who had persuaded the latter to resort to all kinds of precautions whenever she visited her friend.

One day, however, an officer who was serving in that very same regiment of Lancers to which Colonel Orloff belonged made a playful remark to the effect that he was believed to be a favorite with the lovely and cold Czarina, who had never hitherto allowed her glances to fall on any man whatsoever. The young Colonel became immediately alarmed, the more so that he could not discover the source whence this piece of gossip had arisen. He sought Madame Wyrubewa and told her that he had made up his mind to ask to be transferred to a regiment at the front, so as to put a quick end to any possible unpleasantness. She heartily agreed with him in the opinion that this was the best thing he could do, for the sake of everybody, and especially for that of the Empress.

The latter had to be told of Orloff’s resolution. But when he broke to her his intention to request the favor of risking his life in distant Manchuria, she gave way to a fit of despair that absolutely frightened her two devoted friends, and implored him not to leave her, at least not until her child had been born, saying with sobs and tears that she would never be able to undergo the trial which awaited her if she did not know that he was there, as near to her as possible, and that she could see him after all was over, to wish her joy, if the expected babe were a son, and to comfort her if it turned out to be another girl, the one thing which she feared above all others.

At first the Colonel protested. He tried to explain to the despairing and over-excited woman that it was for her sake he wished to go away, at least for a while, and that it cost him more than he could say to come to such a resolution, but that he loved her far too much to let her run any risk. The Empress would not listen to anything, and at last she told him that if he went away she would consider it as a proof that he did not love her, and that all he had said to her had been nothing but empty phrases, such as no doubt he had repeated already to many more women than he even cared to remember. Orloff was stung to the quick, but he remained, nevertheless, firm until Alexandra Feodorowna exclaimed that unless he promised her to remain by her side she would make a scandal and depart for Darmstadt, whether the Emperor allowed her to do so or not. Man-like, he yielded, without suspecting whither this weakness was to lead him sooner than he could imagine.

While this drama was going on in the pretty little house whither Anna Wyrubewa received the Empress of All the Russias, unknown to the rest of the world, so she believed, at least, speculations were rife as to the eventual sex of the child expected by the Czar and Czarina. Everybody, with few exceptions, hoped that it would be another daughter, none more ardently than the Dowager Empress, who would have infinitely preferred the Throne passing to her youngest son than to any boy born to a daughter-in-law whom she made no secret of disliking, and whom she distrusted even more than she disliked. She realized very well that Alexandra Feodorowna, if she was the mother of an Heir to the Imperial Crown, would become a most important personage in the State, as well as in the eyes of her husband. This was not to be desired, in view of her strong German sympathies, which she had lately exhibited more than she had ever dared to do before.

The French alliance was very popular at the time I am talking about, and the Empress was considered as its principal and most bitter adversary. This was one more reason for not wishing her to acquire suddenly an importance that had never been awarded to her by the nation since she had become its Sovereign.

For months this kind of thing went on. Alexandra Feodorowna knew herself to be watched with anything but kind eyes, and this consciousness of the ill-will of which she was the object added to her anxiety and moral sufferings. As the weary months dragged on, she thought more and more of Orloff, and suddenly she realized that she loved him more than any one in the world, and she began to understand all that she must have cost him, in pain and vain regret.

But for her, at least, consolation was at hand. One July morning the Imperial Family were called together with the principal Court and State functionaries in all haste to Peterhof. The long-expected event was at hand, and a few hours would decide as to the future of the Romanoff dynasty. People with anxious faces thronged the vast halls of the Palace, waiting for news which seemed to be very long in coming.

At last, just as the clock struck noon, a doctor entered the room, and told the assistants that Nicholas II. was the father of a son.

There was one person present who listened to this announcement with an impassible face but with a breaking heart, and who could barely find sufficient strength to reach the little cottage where Anna Wyrubewa was sitting pale and anxious, in expectation of--she did not know well herself what. When she saw Colonel Orloff she extended toward him her two hands in a gesture of passionate greeting. But what was her surprise to see him fall on the sofa beside her and bury his head in the silk cushions, with such sobs as rarely shake the frame of a strong man. He had had the courage to sacrifice his personal happiness at the shrine of the woman whom he adored with such religious fervor, but it was more than he could bear to find how thoroughly this sacrifice had been accepted by Providence, and for just a few minutes he had hated this new-born child, whom he knew but too well was going to usurp the place he had hoped to keep forever in the heart and the affections of Alexandra Feodorowna.

XIII

HE DIED TO SAVE HER HONOR

The christening of the little Grand-Duke Alexis was solemnized with great pomp at Peterhof, and there is no doubt but that the position of his mother became, after his birth, quite different from what it had been before this much-wished-for baby had appeared. For one thing, the talk of a divorce between her and the Czar, which had been so frequently indulged in, came to an end, and it was felt, even by the most bitter enemies of the Empress, that it would be waste of time to think about the possibility of its ever taking place.

Nicholas II., in his joy at having at last an Heir, seemed to have returned to his former allegiance in regard to his wife, and he began to confide in her far more than he had done formerly, even consulting her on different occasions. She was the mother of the future Sovereign, and as such entitled to a consideration a childless Empress Dowager could never aspire to in the case of widowhood. It became, therefore, necessary to initiate her in matters concerning the government of the country, and the Czar did this the more willingly that at heart he distrusted his brother, and his numerous uncles and cousins, and feared that in case he died before the small Cesarewitsch had reached his majority the interests of the latter would not be looked after as well as would be necessary, unless his mother were there to protect them.

Alexandra Feodorowna, on the other hand, urged by her two friends, Madame Wyrubewa and Colonel Orloff, began to show far more interest in public affairs than she had ever done since her marriage, and she tried to establish between herself and her husband more intimate relations than she had cared to do formerly, when she used to spend her days lamenting over sorrows, imaginary most of the time, but sufficiently acute to render her intensely miserable. Her son became the principal preoccupation of her existence, and she would not intrust his care to any one, but transformed herself into his nurse, governess, and constant attendant, forgetting everything else, even the care of her daughters, in her nervous solicitude for him. Unfortunately the child was born excessively delicate, and had a curious and rare disease, a weakness of the blood-vessels, which were affected in such a way that he was attacked with hemorrhage at the slightest touch; the smallest of knocks or wounds would endanger his life. He might bleed to death from an ordinary bruise. An unfortunate accident which occurred when he was two years old, and which brought about a rupture that necessitated an operation from which he recovered only by a kind of miracle, only aggravated the chronic ailment with which he was afflicted.

One may imagine how terrible this state of things proved for the Empress, who very stupidly, as it seemed to some people, applied herself to hide from the public the state of physical health of her son, which had, among other results, that of people supposing him to be even more dangerously ill than was the case. The truth was that Alexandra feared that if it were known the boy was afflicted with an incurable disease, it might add to her own unpopularity. Her friends hoped that she might bear another son in time, but after the birth of Alexis she never had any more hopes of maternity, and so there remained nothing else to do but to try and rear this weak, frail, and puny infant, in whom were centered all the future hopes of the proud Romanoff dynasty.