“My name was Sonia Malakoff. I was born in Petrograd, and my father was a colonel of infantry in the Imperial Army, but some difficulty with a superior officer over the discipline of the men led to his retirement. I never understood exactly what the trouble was, but it must have been serious, for he averted court-martial and disgrace only by resigning his commission and promising to leave Russia forever.
“We went to England, for Father had friends there. We had sufficient property to keep us comfortable, and I was brought up as an English girl of the better class.
“When the War broke out Father offered his sword to Russia, but his services were peremptorily refused, and though he was bitterly hurt by the rebuff, he determined to do something for the Allied cause, and so we moved to France and he secured a noncombatant commission in the French Army. I went out as a V.A.D. with the British.
“One night in ’16 as our convoy was going back from the advanced area an air attack came and several of our ambulances were blown off the road. I detoured into a field and put on all the speed I could. As I went bumping over the rough ground I heard some one groaning in the darkness. I stopped and got down to investigate and found a group of Canadians who had been laid out by a bomb. All but two were dead and one of the survivors had a leg blown nearly off, but I managed to get them into my van with my other blessés and crowded on all the gas I could for the dressing-station.
“Next day they told me one of the men—the poor chap with the mangled leg—had died, but the other, though badly shell-shocked, had a good chance of recovery. They were very nice about it all, gave me a mention for bringing them in, and all that sort of thing. Captain Donald Tanis, the shell-shocked man, was an American serving with the Canadians. I went to see him, and he thanked me for giving him the lift. Afterward they sent him to a recuperation station on the Riviera, and we corresponded regularly, or as regularly as people can in such circumstances, until—” she paused a moment, and a slight flush tinged her pallid face.
“Bien oui,” de Grandin agreed with a delighted grin. “It was love by correspondence, n’est-ce-pas, Madame? And so you were married? Yes?”
“Not then,” she answered. “Donald’s letters became less frequent, and—and of course I did what any girl would have done in the circumstances, made mine shorter, cooler and farther apart. Finally our correspondence dwindled away entirely.
“The second revolution had taken place in Russia and her new masters had betrayed the Allies at Brest-Litovsk. But America had come into the war and things began to look bright for us, despite the Bolsheviks’ perfidy. Father should have been delighted at the turn events were taking, but apparently he was disappointed. When the Allies made their July drive in ’18 and the Germans began retreating he seemed terribly disturbed about something, became irritable or moody and distrait, often going days without speaking a word that wasn’t absolutely necessary.
“We’d picked up quite a few friends among the émigrés in Paris, and Father’s most intimate companion was Alexis Konstantin, who soon became a regular visitor at our house. I always hated him. There was something dreadfully repulsive about his appearance and manner—his dead-white face, his flabby, fish-cold hands, the very way he dressed in black and walked about so silently—he was like a living dead man. I had a feeling of almost physical nausea whenever he came near me, and once when he laid his hand upon my arm I started and screamed as though a reptile had been put against my flesh.
“When Donald’s letters finally ceased altogether, though I wouldn’t admit it, even to myself, my heart was breaking. I loved him, you see,” she added simply.
“Then one day Father came home from the War Department in a perfect fever of nervousness. ‘Sonia,’ he told me, ‘I have just been examined by the military doctors. They tell me the end may come at any time, like a thief in the night. I want you to he provided for in case it comes soon, my dear. I want you to be married.’
“‘But Father, I don’t want to marry,’ I replied. ‘The war’s not over yet, though we are winning, and I’ve still my work to do with the ambulance section. Besides, we’re well enough off to live; there’s no question of my having to marry for a home; so—’
“‘But that’s just it,’ he answered. ‘There is. That is exactly the question, my child. I—I’ve speculated; speculated and lost. Every kopeck we had has gone. I’ve nothing but my military pay, and when that stops, as it must stop directly the war is won, we’re paupers.’
“I was surprised, but far from terrified. ‘All right,’ I told him, ‘I’m strong and healthy and well educated, I can earn a living for us both.’
“‘At what?’ he asked sarcastically. ‘Typing at seventy shillings a week? As nursery governess at five pounds per month with food and lodging? No, my dear, there’s nothing for it but a rich marriage, or at least a marriage with a man able to support us both while I’m alive and keep you comfortably after that.’
“I thought I saw a ray of hope. ‘We don’t know any such man,’ I objected. ‘No Frenchman with sufficient fortune to do what you wish will marry a dowerless girl, and our Russian friends are all as poor as we, so—’
“‘Ah, but there is such a man,’ he smiled. ‘I have just the man, and he is willing—no, anxious—to make you his wife.’
“My blood seemed to go cold in my arteries as he spoke, for something inside me whispered the name of this benefactor even before Father pronounced it: Gaspardin Alexis Konstantin!
“I wouldn’t hear of it at first; I’d sooner wear my fingers out as seamstress, scrub tiles upon my knees or walk the pavements as a fille de joie than marry Konstantin, I told him. But though I was English bred I was Russian born, and Russian women are born to be subservient to men. Though I rebelled against it with every atom of my being, I finally agreed, and so it was arranged that we should marry.
“Father hurried me desperately. At the time I thought it was because he didn’t want me to have time to change my mind, but—
“It was a queer wedding day; not at all the kind I’d dreamed of. Konstantin was wealthy, Father said, but there was no evidence of wealth at the wedding. We drove to and from the church in an ancient horse-drawn taximeter cab and my father was my only attendant. An aged papa with one very dirty little boy as acolyte performed the ceremony. We had only the cheap silver-gilt crowns owned by the church—none of our own—and not so much as a single spray of flowers for my bridal bouquet.”
“The three of us came home together and Konstantin sent the concierge out for liquor. Our wedding breakfast consisted of brandy, raw fish and tea! Both Father and my husband drank more than they ate. I did neither. The very sight of Konstantin was enough to drive all desire of food away, even though the table had been spread with the choicest dainties to be had from a fashionable caterer.
“Before long, both men were more than half tipsy and began talking together in low, drunken mutterings, ignoring me completely. At last my husband bade me leave the room, ordering me out without so much as looking in my direction.
“I sat in my bedroom in a sort of chilled apathy. I imagine a condemned prisoner who knows all hope of reprieve is passed waits for the coming of the hangman as I waited there.
“My half-consciousness was suddenly broken by Father’s voice. ‘Sonia, Sonia!’ he called, and from his tone I knew he was beside himself with some emotion.
“When I went into the dining-room my father was trembling and wringing his hands in a perfect agony of terror, and tears were streaming down his cheeks as he looked imploringly at Konstantin. ‘Sonia, my daughter,’ he whispered, ‘plead with him. Go on your knees to him, my child, and beg him—pray him as you would pray God, to—’
“‘Shut up, you old fool,’ my husband interrupted. ‘Shut up and get out—leave me alone with my bride.’ He leered drunkenly at me.
“Trembling as though with palsy, my father rose humbly to obey the insolent command, but Konstantin called after him as he went out: ‘Best take your pistolet, mon vieux. You’ll p
robably prefer it to le peloton d’exécution.’
“I heard Father rummaging through his chest in the bedroom and turned on Konstantin. ‘What does this mean?’ I asked. ‘Why did you say he might prefer his own pistol to the firing-party?’
“‘Ask him,’ he answered with a laugh, but when I attempted to join my father he thrust me into a chair and held me there. ‘Stay where you are,’ he ordered. ‘I am your master, now.’
“Then my British upbringing asserted itself. ‘You’re not my master; no one is!’ I answered hotly. ‘I’m a free woman, not a chattel, and—’
“I never finished. Before I could complete my declaration he’d struck me with his fist and knocked me to the floor, and when I tried to rise he knocked me down again. He even kicked me as I lay there.
“I tried to fight him off, but though he was so slightly built he proved strong as a prize-fighter, and my efforts at defense were futile. They seemed only to arouse him to further fury, and he struck and kicked me again and again. I screamed to my father for help, but if he heard me he made no answer, and so my punishment went on till I lost consciousness.
“My bridal night was an inferno. Sottish with vodka and drunk with passion, Konstantin was a sadistic beast. He tore—actually ripped—my clothing off; covered me with slobbering, drunken caresses from lips to feet, alternating maudlin, obscene compliments with scurrilous insults and abuse, embracing and beating me by turns. Twice I sickened under the ordeal and both times he sat calmly by, drinking raw vodka from the bottle and waiting till my nausea passed, then resumed my torment with all the joy a mediæval Dominican might have found in torturing a helpless heretic.
“It was nearly noon next day when I woke from what was more a stupor of horror and exhaustion than sleep. Konstantin was nowhere to be seen, for which I thanked God as I staggered from the bed and sought a nightrobe to cover the shameless nudity he had imposed on me.
“‘I’ll not stand it,’ I told myself as, my self-respect somewhat restored by the garment I’d slipped on, I prepared a bath to wash the wounds and bruises I’d sustained during the night.
“Then all my new-found courage evaporated as I heard my husband’s step outside, and I cringed like any odalisk before her master as he entered—groveled on the floor like a dog which fears the whip.
“He laughed and tossed me a copy of the Paris edition of The Daily Mail. ‘You may be interested in that obituary,’ he told me, ‘the last paragraph in the fourth column.’
“I read it, and all but fainted as I read, for it told how my father had been found that morning in an obscure street on the left bank. A bullet wound in the head pointed to suicide, but no trace of the weapon had been found, for thieves had taken everything of value and stripped the body almost naked before the gendarmes found it.
“They gave him a military funeral and buried him in a soldier’s grave. His service saved him from the Potter’s Field, but the army escort and I were his only mourners. Konstantin refused to attend the services and forbade my going till I had abased myself and knelt before him, humbly begging for permission to attend my father’s funeral and promising by everything I held sacred that I would be subservient to him in every act and word and thought forever afterward if only he would grant that one poor favor.
“That evening he was drunk again, and most ill-natured. He beat me several times, but offered no endearments, and I was glad of it, for his blows, painful as they were, were far more welcome than his kisses.
“Next morning he abruptly ordered me to rejoin my unit and write him every day, making careful note of the regiments and arms of service to which the wounded men I handled belonged, and reporting to him in detail.
“I served two weeks with my unit, then the Commandant sent for me and told me they were reducing the personnel, and as I was a married woman they deemed it best that I resign at once. ‘And by the bye, Konstantin,’ she added as I saluted and turned to go, ‘you might like to take these with you—as a little souvenir, you know.’ She drew a packet from her drawer and handed it to me. It was a sheaf of fourteen letters, every one I’d written to my husband. When I opened them outside I saw that every item of intelligence they contained had been carefully blocked out with censor’s ink.
“Konstantin was furious. He thrashed me till I thought I’d not have a whole bone left.
“I took it as long as I could; then, bleeding from nose and lips, I tried to crawl from the room.
“The sight of my helplessness and utter defeat seemed to infuriate him still further. With an animal-snarl he fairly leaped on me and bore me down beneath a storm of blows and kicks.
“I felt the first few blows terribly; then they seemed to soften, as if his hands and feet were encased in thick, soft boxing-gloves. Then I sank face-downward on the floor and seemed to go to sleep.
“WHEN I AWOKE—IF YOU can call it that—I was lying on the bed, and everything seemed quiet as the grave and calm as Paradise. There was no sensation of pain or any feeling of discomfort, and it seemed to me as if my body had grown curiously lighter. The room was in semi-darkness, and I noticed with an odd feeling of detachment that I could see out of only one eye, my left. ‘He must have closed the right one with a blow,’ I told myself, but, queerly, I didn’t feel resentful. Indeed, I scarcely felt at all. I was in a sort of semi-stupor, indifferent to myself and everything else.
“A scuffle of heavily booted feet sounded outside; then the door was pushed open and a beam of light came into the room, but did not reach to me. I could tell several men had entered, and from their heavy breathing and the scraping sounds I heard, I knew they were lugging some piece of heavy furniture.
“‘Has the doctor been here yet?’ one of them asked.
“‘No,’ some one replied, and I recognized the voice of Madame Lespard, an aged widow who occupied the flat above. ‘You must wait, gentlemen, the law—’
“‘À bas the law!’ the man replied. ‘Me, I have worked since five this morning, and I wish to go to bed.’
“‘But gentlemen, for the love of heaven, restrain yourselves!’ Madame Lespard pleaded. ‘La pauvre belle créature may not be—’
“‘No fear,’ the fellow interrupted. ‘I can recognize them at a mile. Look here.’ From somewhere he procured a lamp and brought it to the bed on which I lay. ‘Observe the pupils of the eyes,’ he ordered, ‘see how they are fixed and motionless, even when I hold the light to them.’ He brought the lamp within six inches of my face, flashing its rays directly into my eye; yet, though I felt its luminance, there was no sensation of being dazzled.
“Then suddenly the light went out. At first I thought he had extinguished the lamp, but in a moment I realized what had actually happened was that my eyelid had been lowered. Though I had not felt his finger on the lid, he had drawn it down across my eye as one might draw a curtain!
“‘And now observe again,” I heard him say, and the scratch of a match against a boot-sole was followed by the faint, unpleasant smell of searing flesh.
“Forbear, Monsieur!” old Madame Lespard cried in horror. “Oh, you are callous—inhuman—you gentlemen of the pompes funèbres!”
“Then horrifying realization came to me. A vague, fantasmal thought which had been wafting in my brain, like an unremembered echo of a long-forgotten verse, suddenly crystallized in my mind. These men were from the pompes funèbres—the municipal undertakers of Paris—the heavy object they had lugged in was a coffin—my coffin! They thought me dead!
“I tried to rise, to tell them that I lived, to scream and beg them not to put me in that dreadful box. In vain. Although I struggled till it seemed my lungs and veins must burst with effort, I could not make a sound, could not stir a hand or finger, could not so much as raise the eyelid the undertaker’s man had lowered!
“‘Ah, bon soir, Monsieur le Médicin!’ I heard the leader of the crew exclaim. ‘We feared you might not come tonight, and the poor lady would have to lie un-coffined till tomorrow.’
“The fussy lit
tle municipal doctor bustled up to the bed on which I lay, flashed a lamp into my face and mumbled something about being overworked with la grippe killing so many people every day. Then he turned away and I heard the rustle of papers as he filled in the blanks of my certificate of death. If I could have controlled any member of my body I would have wept. As it was, I merely lay there, unable to shed a single tear for the poor unfortunate who was being hustled, living, to the grave.
“Konstantin’s voice mingled with the others’. I heard him tell the doctor how I had fallen head-first down the stairs, how he had rushed wildly after me and borne me up to bed, only to find my neck was broken. The lying wretch actually sobbed as he told his perjured story, and the little doctor made perfunctory, clucking sounds of sympathy as he listened in attentively and wrote the death certificate—the warrant which condemned me to awful death by suffocation in the grave!
“I felt myself lifted from the bed and placed in the pine coffin, heard them lay the lid above me and felt the jar as they drove home nail after nail. At last the task was finished, the entrepreneurs accepted a drink of brandy and went away, leaving me alone with my murderer.
“I heard him take a turn across the room, heard the almost noiseless chuckle which he gave whenever he was greatly pleased, heard him scratch a match to light a cigarette; then, of a sudden, he checked his restless walk and turned toward the door with a short exclamation.
“‘Who comes?’ he called as a measured tramping sounded in the passageway outside.
“‘The military police!’ his hail was answered. ‘Alexis Konstantin, we make you arrested for espionage. Come!’
“He snarled like a trapped beast. There was the click of a pistol-hammer, but the gendarmes were too quick for him. Like hounds upon the boar they leaped on him, and though he fought with savage fury—I had good cause to know how strong he was!—they overwhelmed him, beat him into submission with fists and saber-hilts and snapped steel bracelets on his wrists.
The Dark Angel Page 11
