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The Prophet's Mantle
CHAPTER XVII.
AN UNEXPECTED ADHERENT
THE train which brought Count Litvinoff from London was punctual to the minute, but the trap which was to take him to Thornsett Edge was not, and he was lounging discontentedly among his rugs and luggage at the melancholy little station of Firth Vale.
When Roland had left London, some weeks before, he had parted from Litvinoff with the understanding that he was to spend Christmas with him at Thornsett Edge. Young Ferrier had felt that the Count would be a thousand times better company than his own thoughts, and he preferred asking him to inviting any of his college friends, from whom Richard's absence would provoke comment, and to whom it would have to be explained. For Richard had gone away, leaving no address save that of a solicitor in London, and he had written to the trustees, and steps were being taken for closing the mill. Roland would rather have been anywhere than near the property he was so soon to lose, but Gates urged him to stay at Thornsett till the New Year, and with Count Litvinoff as his guest he hoped to keep ghosts of old times at bay as successfully in his old home as he could hope to do anywhere else. And Litvinoff had accepted the invitation with fervour, for the Stanleys were back at Aspinshaw.
The day he had pitched on for his journey was a bitterly cold one in the middle of December, and the waiting-room at Firth Vale had no big fires, soft carpets, and luxurious lounges. It had nothing but a bench, a table, a Bible, a Prayer-book, and a large stone jug of cold water. Litvinoff was got up quite after the English manner, in a light, long travelling ulster with a hood, and a tourist hat of the same stuff; but in spite of his precautions against weather he was very cold, and not a little cross at his prolonged waiting. He was just debating whether it would not be better to walk, and trust his traps to the mercy of chance, when the station shivered and shuddered as the 'local' came slowly and heavily in.
As it stopped, a stout woman, of about forty-five, with the usual number of blue bandboxes, bundles in handkerchiefs, and brown baskets disposed about her person, came hurrying down the stone steps, accompanied by a hard-featured, grizzled man some years older. Litvinoff watched their descent with a smile, but as they reached the bottom step his face grew suddenly serious. He turned sharply, and, passing into the little waiting-room, became deeply absorbed in the 'Scripture roll' which hung opposite the door, until the train had glided out of the station.
He saw without turning his head that only the woman had gone. The man remained on the platform, gazing after the retreating line of carriages till he started and turned round at Litvinoff's voice.
'I beg your pardon, but do you know a place about here called Thornsett Edge?'
'Ah do,' said the man, after a prolonged stare. 'It's a matter o' three miles off.'
'Can I get a trap here?' In reply he learned that there was no trap nearer than the fly at the 'Jolly Sailors,' and that was half a mile the other side of Thornsett.
'Then I suppose I must walk. Can you tell me the way?'
'Ah can show you,' said the man. 'Ah'm going up to the village; Ah live there.'
He spoke shortly; but Litvinoff had a reason for wishing to talk to the man, and so was content to ignore a curtness of manner which at any other time he would have been the first to resent.
In a few minutes the two were walking over the hard road side by side.
'Do you happen to know Mr Ferrier?'
'Ay; Ah work i' their mill.'
'I suppose they are great favourites hereabouts?'
'They're good lads enow,' said the elder man; 'better nor most o' them.'
'Better than most of whom?'
'Most of the masters and gentlefolks and that like,' said the man, rather sullenly.
'You don't seem to like gentlemen, my friend.'
'Ah don't like them well enough to believe either as they're my friends or as Ah'm theirs,' was the answer, given with a haughty resentment of Litvinoff's epithet, which that gentleman found amusing.
'I'm afraid that's true enough in most cases.'
The man looked a little surprised at having his sentiments met by this ready echo from such an unlikely quarter.
'The toad don't love the harrow,' he said slowly; 'but it ain't often as you can get the harrow to see that.'
'Are you quite sure the toad sees it? It seems to bear it quietly enough.'
'What else can we do?' asked the man fiercely.
'That's exactly what I'm giving my life to trying to find out,' said Litvinoff, very quietly.
The workman stopped short, and looked at the gentleman from head to feet. His gaze was calmly returned.
He turned and went on with a half laugh:
'Have you came down here to find that out, and is Mr Roland going to help you?'
'I can't answer for Mr Roland Ferrier, but as for myself—look here, my friend' (with an emphasis on the word), 'in trying to help the "toads," as you call them, I was driven from my own country, and had to fly for my life, with a pack of soldier wolves at my back.'
'Ay? How was that?' The man was interested in spite of himself, and Litvinoff forthwith plunged into an account of the flight across the frontier on that most exciting night of all his life.
His listener had not heard many exciting stories—they are not rife in Firth Vale—and to this story the fact that it was told by the chief actor lent an unusual interest. The Count was a good story-teller, and the way in which he told his tale left room for no doubt of its truth. When the recital was ended the listener drew a long breath.
'Ah'm glad you gave them the slip,' he said; 'the devils! Eh, but you're a lucky man to have had such things in your life, and to have done something. You don't know what it's like to have your life all bearing and no doing. Why, sometimes when you see how things go wi' some poor folks you're most ready to curse the A'mighty as lets such things be.'
The tone of the words, and the words themselves, told Litvinoff that the man's icy distrust of him had melted in the warmth of admiring sympathy.
'Ah! here comes Mr Roland,' he said a minute after, as a tall figure came in sight; 'he'll show you now. My nearest way's over here,' pointing to one of those uncertain erections of loose stones which do duty for walls in that part of the country. 'Ah hope Ah shall see you again. If you have nothing better to do any time I shall be right glad to see you at our place. Any one at Thornsett'll tell you where I live. My name's Hatfield—John Hatfield.'
'As I thought,' said Litvinoff, as he advanced to meet Roland, and to receive his profuse regrets at the sudden casting of a shoe, which had prevented the mare from getting to the station with the dog-cart, which ought to have been in attendance. 'But come along,' he said; 'it's a jolly day for a walk, and I'll send down for your things as soon as we get home. That was John Hatfield you were with. He's rather a character.'
'He seems to be one of us,' said Litvinoff, as they walked on together.
'How do you mean?'
'He doesn't appear to be particularly satisfied with the present system.'
'No; and he has good wages too,—nearly two pounds a week.'
'Affluence,' said Litvinoff.
'Ah, well,' said Roland, laughing—'it's very good as things go—but he has some reason for hating his betters.'
'Some reason besides the two pounds a week, do you mean?'
'Yes; his daughter, an awfully pretty, nice girl, made a fool of herself—but I'll tell you about that some other time. Shall we go this way? It is a little longer, but it leads round by Aspinshaw, and I want to call there to ask after Mrs Stanley; she has a cold. Old Stanley will be delighted to see you; he's always talking about you. I don't know how he stands your revolutionary ideas.'
Litvinoff laughed.
'I never air them to him. I never talk revolution unless there is some chance of making a convert; but some things are too impossible, and Mr Stanley as a revolutionist is not to be conceived.'
'Miss Stanley seems to be quite a convert, however, although she always had a leaning that way. But I don't think the conversion is a star in your crown. She lays the credit of it to some man—I forget his name—whom she heard in town. I suppose you know him?'
'Ah, yes; I remember Miss Stanley took me down splendidly one morning by saying that now she understood our views, thanks to this man Petrovitch. And I, who had been vainly flattering myself that I had made them intelligible to her!'
'By George, yes!' said Roland, secretly pleased. 'That was rather a facer. But then she didn't hear you at the Agora. Is this Petrovitch a gentleman?'
'Upon my word, I don't know. It seems he knows me, but somehow or other we never seem to meet. It is not impossible that I may have known him under some other name. I must ask Miss Stanley to describe him to me.'
'Oh, she'll do that with a great deal of pleasure,' said Roland; 'it's her great topic at present. That's Aspinshaw, over there to the right.'
It was a very pretty house, and somehow managed to escape, even at this dreary season, such dreariness as hung over Thornsett Edge, though it was built of the same grey stone, and had the same moorland background. There was a good deal of ivy about it, and the grounds were less regular and more full of evergreens and shrubs than the Ferriers' garden.
As the two young men walked up the private road they heard from the rear of the house a confused barking of dogs, and above the noise a girl's clear voice, raised in vain endeavour to still the joyful tumult.
'La belle Clare,' Litvinoff spoke softly, raising his hat as though he saw her, and quickening his pace a little.
'Shall we go round this way?' said Roland; 'we don't stand on ceremony with each other down here.'
'By all means,' said Litvinoff, and they turned into the stable-yard, passing down by the laurel hedge that alone divided it from the garden.
'By God! what's that?' cried the Count, suddenly stopping; and then both men sprang through the hedge. No time to go round now, for there had been the sharp report of a gun, a woman's shriek, and a heavy fall.
CHAPTER XVIII.
A MIXED ASSEMBLY
IT was Sunday afternoon. The rather festive look of Petrovitch's room, in which he now sat alone, was not, however, due to any desire to specialise the day. He had simply made his home as cheerful as possible because he was about to entertain guests.
His table was spread with a snowy cloth, and with the preparations for a tea of a distinctly convivial character. There was jam, and more than one kind of cake; and the room was further brightened by bunches of chrysanthemums. Chairs were drawn round the fire in an inviting-looking circle. The least cheerful object in the room was the owner of it, who sat in his usual chair between the fire and the writing-table. He looked pale and weary, for the frosty weather had strongly renewed the pain in a wound in his breast—an old wound, and a wound that had just missed being a deadly one. Contrary to his usual custom, he was neither reading nor writing. The pipe he had been smoking had gone out, and his thoughts were far back in the past, among the memories which had re-awakened with that aching in his breast. His thoughts went further back than the date of that wound,—went back to the days before he had lost friends, home, and country. He saw again in fancy the brilliant gaiety of the winters in St Petersburg, he heard again the exquisite music of the concerts and the opera,—the balls where Majesty itself had deigned to be present, with anxious brow and uneasy, restless eyes. His memory dwelt longest on a certain torchlight fête on the Neva, when the ice had been a yard thick, and when the élite had been shut off from the common herd by walls made of blocks of solid ice, between which fir trees were planted; when coloured lamps and Chinese lanterns had thrown indescribable magic over the crowd of bright military uniforms and the exquisite toilettes of lovely women who had never in all their lives been troubled by any thought of what their dresses cost. And even at this distance he could not think without half a pang of a certain fair-faced girl, with golden hair, who, in her sapphire velvet and swansdown, had been the star of that fête to his boyish eyes. And she had been kind to him on this the last evening he had spent near her before his new faiths and duties had separated him from her for ever. That was the first loss his creed had cost him. He wondered what would be the last—life itself perhaps. Then he fell to thinking how these beliefs of his had grown up. How the reading of a certain book—an English book—had done for his mind what a successful operation for cataract does for one nearly blind—had shown him the facts of life, no longer half hidden in a mist of falsity, but in all their naked truth and ugliness. How for a time he had closed his eyes again and had tried hard to live on in the life of luxury, beauty, love, and (now he knew) selfishness which had been his by 'right of birth.' He remembered the night when, belated miles from his home, and overtaken by a snowstorm, he had sought refuge in a peasant's hut, how he had talked to his hosts, how one visit had led to many, and how what he had learned from these miserable serfs had forbidden him to forget or to set aside the teaching of the great author whose book had first set him thinking. He remembered that time, perhaps the happiest in his life, when he first began to write—when the ideas which had so long been seething in his brain had found literary expression. He remembered the joy with which he had corrected his first proof, the pride with which he read his first article in a magazine. So thoroughly back in the old time was he that he had stretched out his hand towards this very magazine, which stood bound on a bookshelf, when a heavy foot sounded on the stairs, and a moment after a knock at the door heralded the entrance of Mr Toomey, whom Petrovitch came forward to greet with an almost courtly welcome.
'But your wife,' he said; 'can she not come? I trust all is well with her?'
'All's well with her, and thanking you for the question; but all's not well with that young woman o' yours.'
'Of mine? I do not happen to possess a young woman, my good Toomey.'
'I suppose you and me and my Mary Jane possesses about equal shares of her, then, for I saved her from keeping company with the dead cats and dogs, and you sent her to our place, and now my missus is let in for looking arter her.'
'Come to the fire. I hope it's nothing serious.'
'I don't rightly know. My missus told me I should be better out of the way, and I sent the doctor in as I came by.'
'I am very sorry,' said Petrovitch, 'but I am sure poor Mrs Litvinoff could not be in better hands than those of your good, kind wife.'
It was noticeable that he never spoke of Alice save as Mrs Litvinoff.
'You've a snug little place up here, sir,' said Toomey, looking round him. 'And do you really like reading—those sort of books, I mean,' pointing to Hegel's 'Logic,' which lay open on the table.
'I like doing better than reading, but one must read much to be able to do little in the line of work I am on at present.'
'Your line of work,' said Toomey, glancing admiringly at his host, 'is a thing as I never can get to understand. How it's done, I mean. Now, paving is straightforward. When you've got a paving-stone you know what it is you've got, and how far it'll go, but words is such shifty things, and how you manage to make 'em fit into each other so as to make 'em mean what you mean is what gets over me.'
'Perhaps I don't always make them mean what I mean. Judging by the way people misunderstand what I say—ah! here is Hirsch,' as the door opened, 'and Pewtress too. How are you? Now we're all here but Mr Vernon.'
'He's coming upstairs now,' said Pewtress, the stone-mason with the intellectual forehead, who had been at Mrs Quaid's at the last meeting of the Cleon.
Mr Hirsch seemed to be in more genial mood than he had been in any of those brief conversations which we hitherto had occasion to report. He had shaved himself—he even appeared to have combed his hair—and he shook hands with Toomey quite warmly and cordially.
The host had gone half-way down the stairs to meet his fourth guest—a lame boy, whose crutches made it not easy for him to mount to the height of Petrovitch's nest. He now returned with him on his arm—and after a general introduction of him to the others they all sat down to tea.
Eustace Vernon was a lad of about eighteen, with a pale, highbred-looking face—a rather shy but pleasant manner. He was an enthusiastic admirer of Petrovitch, and since his first acquaintance with the Socialist had made a point of being present at all the meetings on social subjects that he could get to hear of, and could find time to attend. For even the wild enthusiasm of the revolutionary in his teens will not go the length of working a Buddhist miracle and enabling the youthful devotee to be at more than one meeting at the same time. Petrovitch was amused and a little touched by the lad's undisguised homage—and knowing himself to be responsible for the inflammation of the young man's mind, felt bound to keep watch lest he should get into trouble before his newly-kindled fire had had time to burn itself down into steadiness.
As the meal went on it was noticeable that Vernon's love of liberty was not inconsistent with a child-like devotion to strawberry jam.
Petrovitch might have kept a school of instruction for the benefit of those who are always making such desperate efforts to 'annihilate class distinctions'—efforts which usually take place on Saturday afternoons, and are mostly the dismallest of failures. Under his influence his four guests—born in different parts of the world, and drawn from different social grades—talked together with the ease of club acquaintances.
'I had hoped,' said Petrovitch by-and-by, 'to have had a lady here to pour tea out for you, but fate has been unpropitious; Mrs Toomey was not able to come.'
'I regret her,' said Hirsch. 'It always does me much pleasure to meet our good friend's good wife.'
Toomey looked flattered, but a little uncomfortable under this tribute.
'She would have liked to come,' said he, trying to look straight at the other, but only succeeding in fixing one eye on the Austrian, while the other searched the depths of the jam pot with an obstinacy which made Vernon, who had the same in hand, simmer with warm awkwardness. 'She would have liked to come, but the young woman as lodges with us—that Mrs Let-em-off—is ill, and the missus wouldn't leave her.'
'Ah, Mrs Litvinoff, it is you mean. I willed to ask you of her.'
'I beg your pardon,' said Vernon, glad to join in the conversation, as a means of getting away from Toomey's eye. 'Is that any relation of Count Litvinoff? I know him. Splendid fellow, isn't he?'
'I don't think as she's a blessed countess,' said Toomey doubtfully, while Hirsch cast a significant glance of question at his host.
'Oh,' said Petrovitch, 'there are more Litvinoffs than one. It is not an uncommon name. I myself know more than one family of that name.'
'Of course you know the Count,' said Vernon, turning to him. 'What wonderful adventures he has had. He seems to be a man of splendid character. It must have cost him something to give up his social position and go in for the Revolution.'
'So far as I know Michael Litvinoff, he has never done more than his clear duty.'
'What does he do for the Revolution now?' growled Hirsch.
'Well, he does all that any one can do in England. There's not much else to be done besides talking.'
Vernon ended with a sigh, as of one who yearned for the barricades.
'Oh, yes; he'll talk,' said Hirsch discontentedly, and took a large bite of bread and butter.
'You are quite right, Mr Vernon,' said Petrovitch. 'He talks, and talks well; and, as you say, there is here no other means of helping the cause. And where you have such freedom of speech as in England a man's tongue is his best weapon, and ought, under existing circumstances, to be his only one.'
'The great reforms,' said Hirsch—'have they been carried by the tongue, or by the pike and the musket?'
'In this England enough has been carried by the tongue to leave good hopes for the future,' said Petrovitch.
'I am glad to hear you express those opinions,' said Pewtress, who spoke with some deliberation, and chose his words carefully. 'I have noticed that most of the foreigners I have had the pleasure of meeting do not quite understand the condition of affairs here.'
'Do not misunderstand me,' said Petrovitch, rising from the table. 'I consider force to be the last refuge of the oppressed and the wretched—only to be tried when everything else has failed—but then perfectly legitimate.'
'Hear, hear,' cried Vernon enthusiastically, as they all rose; 'that's more like yourself, Petrovitch! And as for Count Litvinoff, I can't help admiring him, if it's only for what he's gone through.'
'For that,' said Hirsch, who seemed to have grown grumpier and grumpier ever since Litvinoff's name had been introduced, 'you, Petrovitch, have had adventures better to hear about than any of his. Did Mr Vernon ever hear how you escaped from Tieff?'
'If Mr Vernon has, I have not,' said Pewtress, as they gathered round the fire. 'If our kind host will tell us the story, I am sure we shall all follow it with a great deal of interest.'
'I am quite willing to tell you about that little affair, but I fancy I've told it once or twice before,' said Petrovitch, handing round a box of thick, short Russian cigarettes, to which his friends all helped themselves; 'and there is no greater bore than the man who will always be telling of his own deeds and adventures.'
'You, at any rate, never speak of yours,' said Vernon, fixing his large eyes on Petrovitch; 'do tell us, please.'
'I assure you I was not refusing "pour me faire prier," and if we are all comfortable I will tell you with pleasure the little there is to tell. Toomey, you have no light.'
'All right, sir,' said Toomey, picking up a hot coal in his fingers and lighting his cigarette therefrom as his host began.
'During the year or so that I was in the fortress of Petro-Paolovski I never encouraged the slightest hopes of escape, for in the first place I, for a long time, suffered from a bad gunshot wound, and, secondly, because it is known only too well among us that escape from Petro-Paolovski is impossible. When, for some unknown reason, the Government sent me to Tieff, my health was improved, and so were my chances of getting away, and from the moment I entered the prison doors I never lost an opportunity of making and maturing a plan of escape. Escaping from a Russian prison is not quite such a desperate business for one of us as it would be for one of you, for you would be like a blind man in a strange house; but those of us who are judged to be the most likely subjects for arrest make it a rule to have the plan of every prison and fortress at our finger-tips.'
'What a marvellous organisation yours is,' said the stone-mason, more as an excuse for escaping a moment from the martyrdom of the unaccustomed cigarette than by way of saying anything original.
'Yes, the war is fairly well organised on both sides,' Petrovitch replied; 'but at present they have the big battalions.'
'But your plans,' struck in Vernon, impatient of the interruption.
'Yes. Well, my knowledge of Tieff told me that there was one way, and one way only, of leaving it, and that was by the way I had come in—by the front gate, and to get to the front gate one had to cross the courtyard, and between my cell and the courtyard lay obstacles too many to be calculated and dangers too great to be faced.'
'And you at once began to calculate them and to face them,' cried Vernon admiringly.
'Rather to elude them,' Petrovitch went on, ignoring the boy's compliment. 'As I could not meet them in detail I thought it better to surmount them in "the lump," as I think I have heard you call it in England. Now the thing that had given me most hope when I heard I was coming to Tieff was that I happened to know that the resident doctor of the prison was, not exactly one of us, but one who sympathised with us secretly—there are many such, who are unwilling to take an active part in the struggle, but who, short of that, help us in many ways—for instance, with money, and especially by hiding those of us who happen to be "wanted." We call them the Ukrivatelli—the concealers.'
'I hope there's lots of them sort, sir,' said Toomey, surreptitiously abandoning his cigarette in favour of the more familiar but slightly stronger smelling 'cutty.' 'But don't they get theirselves into trouble?'
'Yes, if they are found out,' answered Petrovitch; 'but they seldom are. They are a very large class, and are often men whose official rank or social position places them beyond suspicion. My wound still needed attention, and I soon managed to convey to the doctor a suggestion that daily exercise in a prison courtyard was a first-rate specific for gunshot wounds. He seemed to think so too, and before the end of the week I was told that I should have to walk every day for an hour in the only place where a walk of a dozen consecutive yards was possible—in the courtyard.'
'It was no use getting into the courtyard unless I had some prospect of getting out of it, and straight into some perfectly safe refuge. This was a matter that took some weeks to arrange, and during that time I never turned my eyes to the gate. The doctor, though he was willing to help me, was not willing to risk his own safety by carrying too many letters, and a whole code of signals had to be arranged. Luck seldom favours the right side; but I think I was certainly lucky, for just when I began to take my daily exercise the right wing of the prison had to be repaired, and consequently the gates of the courtyard were open all day for the carts of building materials, etc., which had to come in and out. This must have seemed tolerably safe to the authorities, as I was the only prisoner who "took exercise," and there were two sentries to whom was allotted the pleasing duty of watching me. They had a pretty easy time of it for these three weeks, for I used to crawl up and down the yard in a feeble and dejected sort of way, as though I had hardly the strength to put one foot before the other. I always leaned on a stick, and did my best to appear to be at my last gasp. I was well-nigh tired of waiting, so often my escape seemed almost close at hand, and then something happened, and all our plans had to be made over again. Innumerable ideas were suggested, but abandoned for one reason or another. At last it was definitely settled that at a certain signal I was to make for the gate and rush out—that a carriage was to be waiting just outside, and that one or two of our friends were to be there promiscuously, to give false information in judicious doses, as it might be called for. The gate was almost exactly in the middle of the courtyard, and the beat of sentry No. 1 was from the gate to the end of the yard and back, and that of sentry No. 2 from the other end of the yard to the gate and back—thus the face of one of them was always towards the gate. At length the day came when I might expect the signal—this was to be nothing more dramatic and startling than the smallest piece of paper that could well be seen—stuck on the shaft of one of the builder's carts. Cart after cart went by, my hour was nearly up, and I began to feel pretty sure that either the signal was not to be given that morning, or else that it had been given and I had missed seeing it. This last alternative was becoming a maddening certainty, when yet another cart came crawling in, and on the shaft, luckily on the side to which my walk had now brought me, was lightly stuck a little piece of white paper. Once more luck was my friend, for the sentry on the same side of the gate as myself was marching from the gate, and between me and the one walking towards the gate was the cart. Had any one not in the secret been watching me from one of the prison windows at that moment he would certainly have thought that I was the subject of a miraculous cure, for in what seemed to me about half-a-dozen bounds I was at the side of the cart, out of the gate, and in one of two carriages which were passing at the time.'
'And what steps did the authorities take?' asked Pewtress, in the perfectly unexcited and matter-of-fact tone of a School Board inspector.
'Well,' said Petrovitch, laughing a little, 'I was not there at the time, but my friends told me that what followed was well worth seeing. A few seconds after my disappearance the two sentries and the whole of the guard from the guard-room inside the prison came swarming into the street, and there was a most delightful hue-and-cry and clamour. About a hundred yards away to the right a carriage was making off at a mad pace, and after this went the whole posse; with the lieutenant of the guard at their head. They must have been immensely relieved when they saw it pull up opposite the house of a well-known and irreproachable doctor. When, panting and exultant, they surrounded the carriage, they found inside it a surprised and indignant gentleman, who had driven in hot haste to fetch Dr. Seroff to his sick daughter, who had taken a turn for the worse.'
'And were you under the seat, Mr Peter Hitch?' inquired the interested Toomey.
'Not exactly. I had been driven off in the other carriage, which went at a quiet trot, eminently suited to my delicate state of health.'
'The gentleman who went for the doctor, I presume, was "one of you"?' put in Vernon.
'He was of the Ukrivatelli,' said Petrovitch, 'and I am afraid he had a bad time of it for a day or two. He was promptly taken where I had come from, and I fear the young lady's sick-room was invaded by a corporal's guard, but our friend and his family were so evidently innocent that the authorities had nothing left but to put up with their loss, and to grin and bear it, as you say.'
