He drew his revolver and fired five shots in the air; while we all sat, staring at him, and wondering what would happen next; at least that was what I was wondering. The silence was so uncanny!

CHAPTER XLIII

THE WOMAN FROM SIBERIA

At last there was a movement within. Halting footsteps approached the gates, and a man's voice, hoa.r.s.e and weak, demanded: "Who is there?"

"It is Yossof," Anne exclaimed. "How comes he here alone? Where is my mother, Yossof?"

I started as I heard that. Her mother was alive, then, though Anne had said she could not remember her, and Treherne had told me she died soon after her arrest, more than twenty years back.

"She is within and safe; Natalya is with her," came Yossof's quavering voice, as he labored to unbar the gates. We heard him gasping and groaning as if the task was beyond his strength, but he managed it at last. The great doors swung open, and he stood leaning against one of them. In the chill morning light his face looked gray and drawn like that of a corpse, just as it had looked that first time I saw him on the staircase at Westminster. On the weed-grown path beside him lay a revolver, as if he had dropped it out of his hand when he started to unbar the gates.

"What has happened, Yossof?" Anne asked urgently.

"Nothing; all is well, Excellency," he answered. "I rode and gave the word as the order was, and when I reached the town the madness had begun, so I did not enter, but came on hither. My horse was spent, and I found another, but he fell and I left him and came on foot. I found none here save the Countess and Natalya; the others had fled, fearing an attack. So I closed the gates and kept guard."

"G.o.d reward thee, friend; thou hast done well, indeed," Anne said, and moved on to the house.

I felt a twitch on my sleeve, and Mishka muttered in my ear.

"Count our men in and then see the gate barred. We shall be safer so. I will look after Yossof, and find also what food is in the house for us all. We need it sorely!"

So I sat in my saddle beside the gateway, waiting till the last of our laggards had come in. I saw Loris lift Anne from her horse and support her up the short flight of wide stone steps that led up to the house.

An elderly peasant woman hurried out to meet them, and behind her appeared a weird unearthly figure; a tall woman, wearing a kind of loose white dressing-gown. Her gray hair was flying dishevelled about her shoulders; and her face, even seen from a distance as I saw it now, appeared like some horrible travesty of humanity. The wide open eyes were sightless, covered with a white film; the nose was flattened and distorted, the lips contracted, while the other features, forehead and cheeks and chin, were like a livid lined mask, grotesquely seamed and scarred.

The "Thing"--I could not think of it as a human being at that moment--flung out its hands, and shrieked in French, and in a voice that, though shrill with anguish, was piercingly sweet and powerful.

"They have come,--but they shall never take me again; at least they shall not take me alive. Anthony--Anthony! Where are you, my husband?

Save me! do not let them take me!"

Anne hurried towards her, but with a scream she turned and sped back into the house, and some one pushed the door to, so I saw no more; but for some minutes those dreadful screams continued. They sounded almost like the shrieks of Yossof's horse when the wolves were on him.

The men had all ridden in and were muttering to each other, crossing themselves in superst.i.tious fear. They seemed scared to approach the house; and I believe they'd have stampeded back into the forest if I hadn't slammed the gates and barred them again.

"It is not good to be here, Excellency," stammered one. "This place is haunted with ghosts and devils."

"Nonsense," I answered roughly. "Brave men you are indeed to be frightened of a poor mad lady who has suffered so cruelly!"

By judicious bullying I got them calmed down a bit; a Russian peasant is a difficult person to manage when he's in a superst.i.tious funk. Mishka joined me presently, and we marched our men round to the back of the house, and set them foraging for breakfast. Fortunately there was plenty of food; the place seemed provisioned for a siege. I stood about, watching and directing them. I didn't feel in the least hungry myself, only rather dazed.

A hand fell on my shoulder, and I found Loris beside me.

"Come and eat and sleep, my friend; we have done well so far. Mishka will take charge here."

He looked almost as fresh and alert after that tremendous night we'd had, as if he'd just come out of his bedroom at Zostrov, when we joined him in a big dilapidated dining-room, where he'd planked some food and a couple of bottles of wine on the great oaken table, though I was as big a scarecrow as Va.s.silitzi, who was as used up as if he hadn't been to bed for a week.

He had dropped his flippant manner, and was as cross and irritable as an over-tired woman.

"Think of these _canaille_ that we feed and clothe, and risk our lives for!" he exclaimed half hysterically. "We left twenty of them here, when Anna and I started for Zizscky yesterday,--twenty armed men. And yet at the first rumor of danger they sneak away to the woods, and leave their charge, that they had sworn to defend, so that we trusted them. And it is these swine, and others like them,--dastards all!--who clamor for what they call freedom, and think if they get their vote and their Duma, all will go well. Why should we throw our lives away for such as these?

We are all fools together, you and I and Anna. And you," he turned towards me, "you are the biggest fool of us all, for you have not even the excuse that is ours! You have no stake in this accursed country and its people. _Nom du diable_, why do you act as if you had? You are--"

"Calm yourself, Stepan," Loris interposed. "Go and sleep; we all need that. And as for your cowardly servants, forget all about them. They are worth no more. Go, as I bid you!"

His level voice, his authoritative manner, had their affect, and Va.s.silitzi lurched away. He wasn't really drunk; but when a man is famished and dead-tired, two or three gla.s.ses of wine will have an immense effect on him; though one gla.s.s will serve to pull him together, as it did me, to a certain extent anyhow. I was able to ask Loris about that horrible apparition I had seen.

"Yes, she is the Countess Anna Pendennis, or all that remains of her,"

he answered sternly and sadly. "You have only seen her at a distance, but that was sufficient to show you what Siberia may mean to a delicately nurtured woman. If she had only died--as was given out! But she did not die. She worked as a slave,--in the prison in winter, in the fields in summer. She had frost-bite; it destroyed her sight, her face; it made her a horror to look upon. Yet still she did not die, perhaps because her mind was gone, and strength lingers in mad creatures!

"Yossof told all this. He was her fellow prisoner, and he made his escape two--no, three years or more, since. He made his way here, and Anna was good to him; as she is good to every creature in adversity.

Until then she had always believed that her mother died at her birth; but when she learned the truth, she would have moved Heaven and earth to deliver her. It was accomplished at last; the Tzar was induced to sign an order for the release of this mad and maimed woman. Just when all hope seemed lost the deliverance came; and the wreck that remains of the Countess Anna Pendennis was brought here,--less than three months ago; and--"

He broke off as the woman servant Yossof had spoken of as Natalya hurried into the room and unceremoniously beckoned him out. He rose at once and followed her, but turned at the door.

"Get some sleep while you can," he said, nodding towards a great couch covered with a bear-skin rug. "None will disturb you here for a few hours; and we shall have either to fight or to travel again ere long."

I sat for a minute or two, trying to think over the long tragedy that he had summed up in so few words, and wondering where Anthony Pendennis was. Surely he should have been here with his wife and daughter; and yet no one had mentioned him, and I had had no opportunity of asking about him,--had, in fact, forgotten his very existence till these last few minutes.

But consecutive thought was impossible, and I gave up the attempt, as I stumbled to the couch and fell fast asleep.

CHAPTER XLIV

AT Va.s.sILITZI'S

Into my dreams came voices that I knew, speaking in French, in low tones which yet reached my ears distinctly.

"I think we should tell him; it is not right, or just, to keep him in ignorance."

"No,--no,--we must not tell him; we must not!" Anne said softly, but vehemently. "We shall need him so sorely,--there are so very few whom we can really trust. Besides, why should we tell him? It would break his heart! For remember, we do not know."

They were not dream voices, but real ones, and as I found that out, I felt I'd better let the speakers,--Anne and Loris,--know I was awake; for I'd no wish to overhear what they were saying, especially as I had a queer intuition that they were talking of me. So I sat up under the fur rug some one had thrown over me, and began to stammer out an apology in English.

The room was almost dark, and through the window, with its heavy stone frame, I saw the last glow of a stormy sunset. Anne and Loris stood there, looking out, and as I moved and spoke she broke off her sentence and came towards me.

"You have slept long, Maurice; that is well," she said, also in English, with the pretty, deliberate accent I had always thought so charming.

"There is no need for apologies; we should have roused you if necessary, but all is quiet so far. Will you come to my boudoir presently? I will give you tea there. We have scarcely had one word together as yet,--and there is so much to say! I will send lights now; some of the servants have returned and will get you all you need."

Loris opened the door for her, and crossed back to his former post by the window, while I scrambled up, as a scared-looking, shamefaced man servant entered with a lamp, and slunk out again.