by George Moore
‘And you will withdraw upon what conditions?’ asked Mrs White somewhat feebly, for she found herself completely beaten by the little actress, whom she had determined to snub as she thought only she knew how to snub.
‘On this: that you will sign a bond, promising to hand me over twenty thousand pounds, say three months after you are married.’
‘You are certainly a wonderful girl,’ said Mrs White, forgetting her animosity in her admiration for the tact displayed by Miss St Vincent; ‘and when shall I sign this bond?’
‘Why not now?’ answered Miss St Vincent. ‘Can you depend on your maid?’
‘I can. But we shall want two witnesses.’
‘Mine is waiting in a cab at your door. Will you kindly ring, and tell your servant to ask her to come up-stairs?’ As in a dream, Mrs White touched the bell, and gave John the requisite order.
‘But the bond?’
‘I have it in my pocket,’ returned Miss St Vincent, smiling. ‘Did you think that I was so foolish as to come unprepared? These affairs are done at once, or not at all.’
‘True; but one question more. How in the world am I to get twenty thousand from Lord Wedmore without an explanation?’
‘I do not think you will find any difficulty. Something whispered, between two kisses, about debts. I think I could easily get forty.’
‘And what are you going to do with the money when you get it, if it is not an impertinent question?’
‘Marry the man I love, drop opéra bouffe, and play high comedy in a first-class London house,’ was the prompt reply.
‘Well,’ said Mrs White, taking the actress’s hands, ‘you are a fine, brave, clever girl. I hated you yesterday, and I like you to-day; and if you play always as well as you have done to-day, you will conquer London as you have conquered me.’
The deed was signed and witnessed between mistresses and maids, and in that womanly conclave Lord Wedmore’s future life was decided.
The rest of the story is easy to guess; it ran on the lines Miss St Vincent predicted.
Lord Wedmore came round to the theatre, and after having bitterly reproached Miss St Vincent for having kept him waiting all day, heard his fate with sorrow; but he consoled himself with the fact that the dreaded interview, in which he would have to tell his mother that he had married an actress, would not, after all, have to take place.
Two days after, he received a note from Mrs White, asking him to dinner; and a month later they were married. Lady Wedmore chose well her moment between the two kisses, and her husband gave her the twenty thousand without a murmur. It was at once handed over to Miss St Vincent, who married Mr Shirley, renounced opéra bouffe, and played the love scenes in high-class comedy for many years to fashionable London audiences. Lady Wedmore made her husband very happy, probably far happier than Miss St Vincent would have ever done. He did not appear to wish for anything; his cup of happiness seemed to be quite full. But no, there was one little worry - one little desire - that always remained ungratified. But ah, in what life is there not some one little ungratified desire? Lord Wedmore’s was not a large one; it was merely a vexatious bit of curiosity; but at times it proved troublesome enough. It was this - that although he tried hard to fathom the mystery, he never found out how Mrs Shirley and Lady Wedmore became, and always remained, such dear and constant friends.
A RUSSIAN HUSBAND
MADAME ARDLOFF WAS a slender, blond-haired little Parisian, who once used to dance lightly in the ball-rooms of the Champs Elysées, and chatter gaily of the things of the boulevard; but she now no longer felt interest in anything. Paris was to her a vanished dream, Siberia an unchanging reality. Nine months out of every year of blank, mournful snows, white silence, extending from horizon to horizon; then a brief respite, when the fields caught flower, and colour rushed through every valley and over every hill, and innumerable insects buzzed in the green underwoods of the steppes: such is Siberia.
She had married Count Ardloff, the Governor of Tobolsk, to save her father from ruin; but this child of the asphalt thrived but poorly in the desert, and her husband saw, and with fierce anger, that she could not endure her present life; saw there was nothing in common between them but the chain of marriage by which he held her. ‘Scratch the Russian and you will find the Tartar.’ Nothing can be more true. Primitive races can but ape the sentiments and refinements of feeling which make bearable our lives, and Count Ardloff could not pass the gulf - the impassable gulf - the gulf made by centuries of civilization which lay between him and his wife. He could hold her to his bosom, but even then she seemed nearer to Vanca, a young Polish officer, than to him. He could tell her to do this and that, and force her to obey him, and that was all. They were separate beings that marriage could not join together. They had to walk through life with linked arms, but their spirits remained unblended.
But when Vanca was present all was different. Then Madame Ardloff’s eyes would fill with regretful tenderness, that was akin to happiness, and it was clear that the mystic union of souls which we all seek and yearn for as the highest of contentments was at once accomplished. A haze of dream and poetry arose around them, enveloped them, and the beautiful Pagan fancy of a cloud lover seemed to be realized. And yet no friendship could be purer; they were merely exiles who talked of their distant homes, their lost friends, and their abandoned dreams.
But such sentiments are little understood in Siberia, and ugly little rumours concerning Madame Ardloff and young Vanca had begun to be whispered - the end of a phrase hissed slightly and a concluding smile was turned somewhat serpent-wise - that was all. The Siberian hostesses, in their mock French fashions, could not, although trembling for their own safety, resist a little innuendo. Count Ardloff watched and waited as suspicious and fierce as a wild cat. He was a man about fifty, his beard was strong and grey, and he stook like a Hercules. Five years passed in Paris had lent him a disguise which, in his ordinary moods, perfectly enabled him to hide his Tartar character, and when she married him the bright French girl little thought that a few glasses of champagne or a slight contradiction would transform the elegant gentleman on whose arm she leaned into a savage Cossack. Now a cold gleam shot from his cold eyes as they fell upon his wife, who, lying back in her easy chair, sat languidly listening to Vanca’s clear voice. It mattered not to the Count what they were saying. He did not stay to consider whether they were planning an elopement or talking of the emperor. He merely hated her for appearing to be so intimate with one of his officers. She belonged to him - she was his property - a property he had acquired because it had pleased him to do so. What, then, did she mean by thinking of or concerning herself about anyone else? These were the Count’s thoughts as he took the cards that had been handed to him and shuffled them through his strong fingers. Some eight or a dozen gentlemen in the uniform of the Russian army were grouped around him, a lady in a clear dress sat at the piano, and couples were seated under the greenery of the exotic plants with which the recesses of the room were filled. There was not much conversation, the interest of the company being apparently centred in the Count. Every now and then someone passed across the room, and, after watching the cards for a few minutes, would cringingly murmur some words of adulation. Every phrase began or ended with ‘Your Excellency’, and was rounded off with a bow or a modulation of voice betokening the social inferiority of the speaker.
But the Count paid very little attention to his flatterers. When he had finished dealing, as he threw down the last card, he glanced again in the direction where his wife was sitting. As she listened to the young Pole her attitude grew more and more abandoned. He spoke to her of his past life, of a lost love; and the accents of regret with which he narrated his experiences reminded her of how she had suffered similar deceptions; of how her aspirations and glad visions had, like his, perished. They spoke of those sad eternal truths which each pair of lovers fancy they alone have discovered, but which have moved all past generations, as they will, doubtless, move all those which are coming t
o birth, till man’s soul has ceased to be what it is.
So absorbed were Vanca and Madame Ardloff in the contemplation of the past that they were only so much conscious of each other as each helped the other to realize their separate lives. The outer world had faded from them, and in the insinuating emotion which drew them together she leaned her hands over the edge of the chair, and, following the movement instinctively, he took up the glove she had laid down and played with it. At this sign of intimacy the Count’s eyes flashed vindictively, and he called to his wife impatiently:
‘Marie, will you order me some champagne?’
Without answering, she told Vanca to ring the bell. Instantly rising, he complied with her request, and then, forgetting he had not returned the Countess her glove, stopped to speak to a friend. His friend tried to warn him with a look, but, before a word could be said, the Pole had walked across the room, still twirling the fatal glove in his fingers. He did this with a certain nonchalance that would have angered a better-tempered man than Count Ardloff. A grim scowl passed across his face, and he whispered something to an aide-de-camp who stood near him. The officer left the room. It was a terrible moment, full of consternation and silence; but before the unfortunate Pole had time to realize his danger two Cossack soldiers entered the apartment. The company gave way before them, withdrawing into groups and lines. Vanca had his back turned to them, and he still wrapped the fatal glove round and round his fingers. He stood as if lost in reverie scanning a marble bust of the Countess. At last the stillness of the room awoke him, and, as the Cossacks were about to seize him, he turned. His frightened eyes met theirs; he started back precipitately, but, with a quiet movement, the soldiers laid hands upon him. In a low voice the aide-de-camp said:
‘You are arrested by order of His Excellency.’
Dazed and bewildered, Vanca pushed the soldiers from him, and, stretching forth his hands, appealed to the Count.
‘How is this, Your Excellency?’ he cried, wildly. ‘I am guilty of nothing. There must be some mistake.’
Count Ardloff stood broad, tall, and vindictive, with the light of the lustre shining full on his high, bald forehead; an iron-grey beard concealed the lower part of his square face. Vanca cried one more word of appeal, and then stopped puzzled. Madame Ardloff arose, pale and trembling, but her husband motioned her away. The guests remained in rows, still as the figures of a frieze, and, at a sign from the officer, with a movement of shoulders the Cossacks forced the Pole from the room. The scene was very short.
Immediately after the Count spoke of indifferent things, and glasses of champagne were handed round. Madame Ardloff stared vacantly, unable to collect her thoughts; till, suddenly seeing the glove which Vanca had dropped, the reason of his arrest dawned upon her, and she trembled violently, and so agitated was she that she could scarcely say good-bye to her guests. The Count, however, dismissed them rapidly, speaking all the while of the approaching summer, the number of convicts that had escaped from the mines, and the Emperor.
When husband and wife were alone, the Count picked up the glove and handed it to the Countess, with an ironical smile, and, without alluding to what had happened, said that it was very late, and advised her to retire to her room. She obeyed without answering. She knew something horrible was going to happen, and, stupefied with fear, she mounted the staircase. He stayed behind to give an order, and, mastering her fears, she listened.
He was talking in the hall below to his aide-de-camp, and she heard him say that Vanca must be at once degraded to the ranks; and her heart beat with joy at the prospect of his escaping with so slight a punishment. Her emotion was so great that she did not catch the next phrase, and when she heard again her husband was telling his officer to have all in readiness, that he would be at the barracks at nine next morning. There was something strange in this, and Madame Ardloff went trembling to her room. The shadows seemed livid, and the lamp burnt luridly; and, oppressed with the horrors of the evening, she sat in the silence, afraid to go to bed. Through the frozen window-panes she could see glistening the wide snows of the Siberian winter. Wearily she asked herself why she had been condemned to live in these impassable deserts. The howl of a dog broke the stillness of the night, and it sounded in her excited mind like the last dying cry of some poor one unjustly done to death. What was to become of Vanca? Why could she not save him? Save him! Was there need for that? Starting to her feet, she strove by an effort of will to rid herself of her terrors. Then, shaken with forebodings and regrets, she undressed; but a hundred fancies assailed her imagination, and gave life to the figures on the tapestry, to the shadows on the floor, and, white, like a ghost in a tomb, she lay restless in her large bed.
Sleep fled from her, until at last she fell into a deep, dreamless torpor, from which, towards morning, she was awakened by a heavy tramping of feet in the corridor. A moment after her husband entered. He was attired in the Russian military cloak, and his hand was on his sword.
‘Get up,’ he said, impatiently. ‘I want you to come out with me. I have ordered the sledge.’
‘Why should I get up at this hour? It is only just daylight, and I am very tired.’
‘I am sorry you are tired, but I want you to come to the barracks.’
Remembering the order she had heard given over-night, Madame Ardloff turned pale at the mention of the word barracks. Twenty times she felt an infinite desire rising up within her to throw herself into his arms and beg him to be merciful; but he looked so implacable that her courage died away, and she feared that any interest she might show for Vanca would only still further prejudice his chance of escape.
Wrapping her long blue-fox-fur mantle around her, she told him she was ready. He looked to see if she had forgotten anything. Her handkerchief lay on the table, and as he handed it to her his attention was attracted by a flaçon de sel volatile.
‘We may want this,’ he said, and slipped it into her pocket.
‘What do you mean?’ she said, turning suddenly. ‘Are you going to murder me?’
‘To murder you!’ he replied, laughing cynically. ‘What nonsense!’ And, half pushing her before him, they descended the staircase. She tried several times to resist him, but he got her into the sledge.
‘To the barracks,’ he cried to the coachman, as he sat down beside his wife and arranged the rugs. During the drive neither spoke a word. His face was clouded in a sort of sullen moodiness, and, terrified, she looked down the dazzling perspectives of the outlying streets. The barracks were situated at the further end of the eastern suburb. The horses cantered briskly, and soon a large building appeared. It stood alone; all round stretched the white expanse of the steppes, and the sledge passed a large gateway into the barrack square, which had been cleared of snow.
The officer who was waiting to receive them helped the Count to descend. Madame Ardloff was told to remain seated. Immediately after a trumpeter blew a call, and a file of men marched to within a few yards of the sledge, and formed themselves into a double line. ‘Front rank, quick march,’ cried the officer. When they had gone eight paces, he cried, ‘Halt!’ and then gave the order, ‘Right about turn.’
Vanca was then led forth. He walked between two soldiers. He was naked to the waist, and behind him came the executioner. He carried in his hand the barbarous knout, and over his shoulder dangled its seven cruel lashes.
In Russia, an officer in the Army cannot be flogged, but he can be degraded to the ranks in twenty-four hours. This is what happened in the present case. Vanca was now a common soldier, and was waiting to receive the fifty lashes to which he had been sentenced. And the fashion of administering the knout in Russia is as follows. The condemned man is forced to walk between two files of soldiers; before him, holding a sword pointed at his breast, is an officer, who steps backward with a slow and precise pace, which regulates the strokes that the executioner administers. So terrible are the loaded thongs, armed at the end with sharp iron hooks, that at the tenth or eleventh blow, even the most robust fa
ll fainting to the ground. Sometimes, however, the executioner is merciful, and kills the victim outright, but more often he is forbidden to strike with his full force, and the mangled being is carried to a hospital and cured of his wounds; and this is repeated until he has received his full punishment.
Such is Russia; and for Vanca all was now prepared - the soldiers stood in line, the executioner twirled his lashes, only an officer to lead the way remained to be appointed. It was for Count Ardloff to do this. He looked around; there were half-a-dozen men standing round him, any one of which he might have chosen. As he glanced from one to the other, his attention was attracted by a man who, from a doorway at the other end of the barrack yard, was eagerly watching. ‘Who is that man?’ asked the Count. The man was called to. It was Vanca’s brother. ‘What are you waiting about that doorway for?’
‘I was waiting to see if your Excellency would pardon my poor brother,’ replied the Pole.
‘Pardon your poor brother,’ said the Count Ardloff with a bitter sneer. ‘I will show you how I pardon. Draw your sword and lead the way, and take care you don’t walk too fast.’
After one deep, questioning look, which told him that the Russian meant to be obeyed, he broke his sword across his knee, and said, as he hurled the pieces scornfully aside: - ‘Do with me as you will, but I will not serve a country inhabited by barbarians, and governed by fiends.’
