Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 2

PART I.

PART I.“187, ”shouted the moujik in charge of the division. “Now then, there, 187, why don’t you come when you are called?”

A young man, who had been crouching in a corner by himself, apart from the group of other prisoners, looked up wearily, as the moujik shook him roughly by the shoulder. He was a very young man, almost a boy, not a trace yet of moustache over his finely-cut mouth, his great blue eyes staring straight in front of him, despair—hopeless, abject despair—written on every feature of the young face. The boy rose, and with weary steps followed the moujik across the wide hall, where some fourscore or so men of all ages, and apparently all conditions, were huddled together.

They had all stood their trial—a mockery—and had been condemned wholesale to the mercury mines in Eastern Siberia—the capital punishment practically, but a punishment that sometimes takes three years to complete; a daily, hourly t*****e, a fight against privations, disease, ignominy, with a felon’s grave as ultimate goal. They were all leaving Moscow on the following day, to begin their weary trudge across miles of arid plains, scantily fed, scantily clothed, perishing by dozens on the wayside through cold and hunger.

And young Count Wladimir Rostopchine was one of these poor wretches. Wealthy, high-born, the idol of St. Petersburg society, he saw himself transformed, after three months imprisonment, into No. 187, one of g**g No. 2, en route for Irkutsk on the morrow.

Eh! what would you? He had conspired, at any rate had been sadly mixed up in that last attempt against the life of the Tsar, therefore he must die. Oh, yes! that is inevitable, but not for three years, Count Wladimir, not till you have brought to the surface enough mercury to pay for this gracious prolongation of your existence: after that you may pay your debt to Nature; your death will lie at her door, not at that of the paternal Government of your country.

The moujik, having reached the entrance of the hall, handed over 187 to four cosaques, who, having secured the young man’s wrists with handcuffs, led him through interminable stone passages, dimly lighted by occasional paraffin lamps, to a massive oak door, over which hung a fine wrought-iron bracket that bore the sign: “His Excellency the Governor’s Office.” Hardly had they led their prisoner before this door, when it was opened from the inside, and a voice said:

“Have you brought 187, sergeant?”

“Yes, your Excellency.”

“Bring him in, then, and wait outside with your men, till you are required again.”

The sergeant of cosaques pushed the young man within the room, and left him standing there, while he himself retired, closing the massive doors with a loud bang.

Count Wladimir Rostopchine, whom all these proceedings did not appear to interest in the least, waited patiently to hear what his Excellency wished to say to him. No doubt more examinations, more questions to answer; he was used to these by now, and had ceased to fear, or hope for them.

“Count Wladimir Rostopchine!” said his Excellency after a slight pause, during which he had been contemplating the young man with more curiosity than compassion.

The boy started. It was three months since he had heard his name, since he had ceased to be a man and had become a number.

“As you are fully aware,” added his Excellency, “you have been tried for high treason and lèse-majesté, and condemned to the mercury mines of Eastern Siberia—that is to say, to death.”

“I am aware of that fact, your Excellency, and need not be reminded,” said the boy bitterly.

“To-morrow,” resumed the Governor, “Count Wladimir Rostopchine will cease to exist. His goods and moneys become the property of the Crown, his name is erased from the list of His Majesty’s subjects. . .”

The young man gave a slight shudder as the old Governor paused for one moment, and, if possible, a look of still greater despair overspread his haggard features, but this time he said nothing.

“And to-morrow,” continued his Excellency imperturbably, “No. 187 will start from Moscow, together with two hundred more felons, on their way to Irkutsk, their ultimate destination, there—”

“You need not tell me more, your Excellency,” interrupted the young man impetuously. “I know what awaits me there; I know of the horrors, the privations, the agonies of a Siberian living tomb. Is it to tell me of them you have summoned me here?”

“I merely wished to assure myself,” said his Excellency blandly, “that you are fully aware of what awaits you to-morrow, unless—”

“Unless?” said Count Wladimir, in amazement. “Is there an unless?”

His Excellency paused for some time. He was studying the young man’s wan-looking face through his gold-rimmed spectacles. Evidently, experienced man of the world as he was, he was somewhat at a loss as to the best way of wording what he was about to say.

“Count Wladimir,” he said, at last, “it is in my power to offer you an alternative. Through your rebellion against the authority of the Tsar, your crime against his sacred person, you have forfeited your liberty, your great wealth, your illustrious name. I am prepared to offer you, in the name of His Most Excellent Majesty, whom may God continue to save, a new name, wealth that will place you beyond ordinary needs, and the right to go freely among your fellow-men, if——”

The effect of his Excellency’s last words on Count Wladimir Rostopchine was startling in its intensity; hope that refused to be crushed struggled for mastery over the now vanishing look of despair; all the young man’s faculties seemed centred in the one urging intreaty to the Governor to proceed.

“If,” resumed his Excellency, “you will agree to the one condition His Most Excellent Majesty the Tsar will ask you to fulfil in exchange.”

“And that condition?” asked Count Wladimir breathlessly.

“Is, that you will freely give that name, over which after to-day you will have no further right, to such person as His Majesty will designate.”

“And that person?”

“Is a lady.”

“You mean that the Tsar wishes me to marry some——”

“His Majesty offers you any name you might choose, and complete liberty outside the frontier of Russia, together with a substantial portion of your confiscated wealth, if you will undertake to go through the ceremony of marriage with a lady whose reputation is spotless and will always remain so.”

“And is that all?” asked Count Wladimir, not daring to trust his senses.

“No, not quite all,” said the Governor, “but practically so; you must remember that henceforth Count Wladimir Rostopchine is dead; that after the ceremony is performed there will be a widowed Countess Rostopchine who will go into society, to Court. That lady you must never approach, she must never see or know him by whose side she will stand at the altar. To her you will be as dead as to the rest of the world.

“Outside Russia, you will be free to begin life anew, under whichever name or nationality you may wish to select. You are young; all Europe is open to you; you will still be comparatively wealthy; you have to the best of my belief no near kinsfolk, and your friends will mourn you, as they already are doing, as one practically dead. Do you accept?”

“Yes, I accept,” said the young man, with a tinge of bitterness. “You have shown me hell, hideous, terrible, and now you give me a glimpse of earth again; I would be a fool not to accept the alternative. I am ready to fulfil His Majesty’s conditions.”

“It is well,” said the Governor; “but remember one thing,” and his Excellency’s manner became solemn and emphatic, he was pronouncing sentence of death: “Count Wladimir Rostopchine is condemned for high treason and as such doomed to t*****e and death; if at any time in the future, anyone—be he or she who they may—should know that he has so far escaped that doom, then the Russian police, whose arm is long, and whose eye is far-seeing, will know how to reach and punish him, even if he have built an empire and set himself upon a throne. Once more, do you accept?

Count Wladimir, who could not repress a shudder and was choking with emotion, dropped his head on his breast and whispered:

“I do.”

That same night, at the hour of midnight, the gloomy prison chapel presented a curious appearance. The candles on the high altar threw an intermittent and flickering light on two young forms kneeling devoutly on a double prie-Dieu, their heads bent under the benediction of an old bearded pope who had just passed a gold ring on the third finger of the right hand of each: “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

There were no flowers, no music, no incense, and there was no joy. There was one broken heart—a young man’s, almost a boy’s, who at the foot of the throne of God bade adieu to home, kindred, name. The other figure—an enigma—swathed in white, her face concealed beneath a white satin mask, through which a pair of dark eyes looked somewhat compassionately from time to time at the bent figure by her side. Once the eyes of the two met, as, the pope having given the last benediction, their hands were joined for the first and only time. A look of inquiry was answered by one of pity, and the mouth beneath the mask smiled a trifle contemptuously. He who had been Count Wladimir Rostopchine looked at that mouth: it was finely chiselled, as that of the Medici Venus and on the left side, just above the upper lip, a little mole gave it an arch and childlike expression.

The next moment the white figure had disappeared.

His Excellency the Governor, who had assisted at the marriage ceremony in the capacity of witness, now touched the young man on the shoulder. He pulled himself together, as if waking from a dream.

“The blessing of God be with thee, my son,” said the old pope.

“Amen,” said the young man fervently, and followed Count Gulohoff through the dark chapel, at the door of which four cosaques stood in readiness to escort him out of Moscow, and then beyond the frontier.

Count Wladimir Rostopchine was dead.

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