Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 2

PART II.

PART II.The year 1889 was, without doubt, the most brilliant that that gay little city Budapesth had known for some time. The exhibition was an unqualified success, and the town was thronged with visitors of all nationalities, thus realising the dreams of the worthy town councillors, which was to make Budapesth the Paris of the East.

As for the “Hotel Hungaria,” it certainly became dazzling in its cosmopolitan magnificence when, after seven o’clock, the czigány band of Rácz Pali began playing in the dining-room, and a brilliant medley of notabilities of every clime and country assembled to enjoy the best cuisine and finest music in the world. Russians, Turks, French and English, Germans and Chinese, Roumanians and Albanians, elbowed each other to secure good tables, and till past midnight conversation in every civilised and most barbaric tongues nearly drowned the lively csárdásand pathetic love songs.

His Excellency Prince Radovitch, the Transbalkanian ambassador, himself attracted by the gay crowds, mostly dined downstairs. He knew so many people, and was constantly exchanging handshakes and greeting with his various diplomatic friends, while his secretary, M. André Zaika, silent and taciturn as usual, would sit and gaze absently round, a sad, almost yearning, expression in his eyes.

His Excellency, with characteristic kindliness, would from time to time attempt to drag him into conversation, or offer to introduce him to some of his younger friends, but M. Zaika appeared to be almost morbidly sensitive, and to shrink from i*********e with his fellow-men; and yet his Excellency held him in great esteem, gave him his fullest confidence, and consulted him in most matters, both political and otherwise, for he knew Zaika’s judgment was clear, and his counsels well worth following.

It was now nearly ten years since André came to him in Belgrade, without friends, without introductions, but possessed of a face and bearing that invited confidence, and a nature that was worthy of keeping it. He seldom spoke, and never smiled; true he never frowned either, emotion seemed to have died in him. Once only did his Excellency see him start, and that was a day or two ago, when merry laughter sounded in the hall of the “Hungaria,” and the dining-room door being thrown open, there walked in a beautiful woman. She was a Russian apparently, for she spoke in that language to her companions, whom his Excellency knew well, for they were diplomats mostly. Her face was peculiarly lovely, her expression sweet, almost childlike, and at the comer of her mouth, just above the upper lip, there was a little mole that gave the face the most piquant expression imaginable.

Zaika certainly turned pale then, and the glass he was holding smashed to pieces in his hand. The next moment he had recovered himself, and his Excellency, with the discretion peculiar to his office, made no remark on the subject.

“I am going to Her Majesty’s little soirée to-night, André,” said his Excellency on the following day; “the hotel seems more crowded than ever, and I must impress upon you that His Majesty’s draft of the secret treaty will remain in my bureau. I should be afraid to take it about with me at night.”

“Your Excellency need have no fear,” answered André Zaika; “I shall in all probability sit and read in the room until your return.”

“Ah, that will be very kind of you. Good-night, André!”

And his Excellency stepped into his carriage, en route for Buda, leaving Zaika standing in the hall. It was a lovely, clear frosty night, with a brilliant moon shining overhead. The young man watched the ambassador’s carriage out of sight, then turned to go in again, but the keen air tempted him. A walk along the embankment seemed most enticing, and at this early hour of the evening—it was not more than ten o’clock—with the keys of the rooms in his pocket, all within was quite safe.

When he came home it was a quarter or so before midnight. He mounted the broad staircase leading to his Excellency’s suite of rooms on the first floor, buried in thoughts of ten years ago. To his astonishment, hardly had he reached the top of the stairs when it seemed to him that at the further end of the passage someone had just disappeared within the door of the room his Excellency used as study—the key of which was at that moment in his own pocket.

Filled with some vague foreboding, he crept noiselessly along the passage, and having reached the door, pushed it gently open. The room was dark, save for a tiny bull’s-eye lantern that lit up a space no larger than the hand. But what he did discern in that small space, and by that dim light, made Zaika shudder with apprehension.

Apparently sitting at his Excellency’s desk was a person, whose form the young man could not distinguish, but in whose hands was the draft of the secret treaty. Zaika made a rush for the electric light button, turning it full on; the figure rose with a violent start, and faced him. It was a woman—a woman in a rich evening dress partly hidden under a dark fur cloak. A woman radiantly beautiful—she whose hand he had once touched ten years ago—in a gloomy prison chapel when he slipped a wedding ring on her finger, and the old pope had blessed them: “In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”

“Countess Wladimir Rostopchine!” he gasped, quite unable to understand what he saw.

The lady, who at first had almost fallen under the weight of an overmastering terror, now looked at him, and as she looked an icy cold veil of perfect composure seemed gradually to overspread her features. She gathered up her cloak round her, took her gloves, fan, even the little tell-tale lantern, and walked across the room, to the door; evidently she did not intend to deign an explanation.

“Madame, you cannot go!” said André Zaika, struggling with his emotion, “until——”

“Until what, Monsieur?” said the Countess with a slightly impertinent elevation of the eyebrows.

“Until you have explained to me your presence in this room,” replied the young man resolutely, and, closing the door, he put the key in his pocket.

“I have no explanation to give to you, Monsieur,” said the Countess, with imperturbable sangfroid; “have the goodness to allow me to pass.”

“No explanation?” said André, who, full of excitement himself, was unable to understand the apparent equanimity of a lady found in so compromising a position. “I represent his Excellency the Transbalkanian ambassador; that bureau at which I found you sitting contained his papers, private papers——”

“What of that, Monsieur? I knew it,” was the calm reply.

“And,” asked André—“you read them?”

“I read them.”

“For what purpose: surely——”

The young man paused. In a moment the whole truth flashed across his brain. Ten years ago the Russian Government had need of a spy; it employs many; but it wanted one who would be admitted in every society, one whose name and rank would place above suspicion. He himself, condemned to death, was asked for that name and rank with which to hide this infamy, and in exchange was offered his life and freedom. He had accepted. And now he stood face to face with his wife, the Countess Wladimir Rostopchine, a spy!

A look of such unutterable scorn overspread his face that the lady winced; but still she said nothing, and stood, proud and calm, gazing at him with a look, half of pity and half of contempt, that he had seen in her eyes once—so long ago.

“Madame,” he said at last, trying in vain to imitate her sangfroid, “do you know that at this moment I could ring the bell, and expose and denounce you as a thief?”

She shrugged her shoulders, almost imperceptibly, and smiled somewhat as she said:

“I think, Monsieur, you would find it a trifle difficult to prove that the wealthy Countess Wladimir Rostopchine was in the act of stealing some 1000 guldens from a stranger’s room in an hotel.”

“Are you really under the impression, Madame,” asked the young man, who had now quite lost what little self-control he had, “that I shall allow you to leave this room as you came, and not cry shame and scandal about you to the four corners of Europe? Do you really think that I shall not, after this, brand you as a spy, warning all against you, and rendering you powerless to injure my master and friend?”

“No, Monsieur,” she said quietly; “I do not think that you will do that.”

“Because?” he asked defiantly.

She looked at him for two or three moments; the childlike expression on her mouth hardened; the look of pity died out of her eyes. They were enemies now.

“Because, Monsieur, the dead cannot speak,” she said.

“The dead?”

“We in Russia,” she said, with emphasis, “have never much believed in ghosts; still children do say that the spirits of those who lie unburied sometimes come to earth—and speak. Then, Monsieur, it becomes the duty of the friends and relatives—or of the widow —to see that the dead is really buried, and the ghost is heard of no more.”

The young man shuddered. It seemed to him as if once more he heard the death sentence pronounced on him ten years ago. Once more he saw the great Moscow prison, the herds of half-starving prisoners, the chains, the gates, and the prison chapel, where the old pope had blessed him. He did not speak. What answer was there to give? This woman, with the enigmatical smile and the childlike mouth, had said all there was to say:

“The dead cannot speak.”

Mechanically he drew the key from his pocket, and opened the door. Countess Wladimir Rostopchine—his wife or his widow—which?—walked out past him without deigning to give him another look, and she disappeared from his view along the gaily lighted corridor, while from below Rácz Pali’s band struck up the joyous notes of the “Blue Danube” waltz.

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