Complete Works of F Marion Crawford

by F. Marion Crawford

The policeman had nothing to say to this very just question.

  “Then I advise you to consider what you are doing. In spite of my appearance, which, I admit, is at present somewhat disorderly, I am a Russian nobleman, as you will discover so soon as I am submitted to a properly conducted examination in the presence of your officers. I have not the least intention of running away, and if this doll was stolen, I was not connected in any way with the theft. Since I respect the authorities, I insist upon being respected by them, and if I am treated in a degrading manner in spite of my protests, there are those in Munich who will bring the case to proper notice in my own country. I am ready to accompany you quietly wherever you choose to show me the way.”

  Something in his manner impressed the officials with the possible truth of his words. They looked at each other and nodded.

  “Very well,” said the one who was conducting the arrest.

  “Moreover,” said the Count, “I crave permission to carry myself the object of contention, until the other claimant has established his right of possession.”

  So saying the Count took the broken Gigerl from the table where it lay, and carrying it upon his hands before him, like a baby, he solemnly walked in the direction of the door, thus heading the procession, which was accompanied into the street by the idlers who had collected inside.

  “God be thanked,” said the old woman in the corner devoutly, “I have yet my beer!”

  “And to think that only one of them has paid for his supper,” moaned the pale-faced innkeeper, sitting down upon a chair and contemplating the wreck of his belongings with a haggard eye. The “Gigerl-night” was remembered for many a long year in the “Green Wreath Inn.”

  At the police station the arresting party told their own story in their own way, very much to the disadvantage of the Russians and very much in favour of the porters and of the officials themselves. The latter, indeed, enlarged so much upon the atrocities perpetrated by Dumnoff as to weary the superior officer. The Cossack having escaped, the policemen did not mention him. The officer glanced at Dumnoff.

  “Your name?” he inquired.

  “Victor Ivanowitch Dumnoff.”

  “Occupation?”

  “Cigarette-maker in the manufactory of Christian Fischelowitz.”

  “Lock him up,” said the officer. “Resisting the police in the execution of an arrest,” he added, speaking to the scribe at his elbow.

  “Your name?” continued he, addressing the Count. “Boris Michaelovitch, Count Skariatine.”

  “Count?” repeated the officer. “We shall see. Occupation?”

  “I have been occupied in the manufacture of cigarettes,” answered the Count. “But as I was only engaged in this during a period of temporary embarrassment from which I shall be relieved to-morrow, I may be described as having no particular occupation.”

  The officer stared incredulously for a moment and then nodded to the scribe in token that he was to write down what was said.

  “Charged with having stolen a doll, is that it?” He turned to the policeman in charge.

  “Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann.”

  “May it please you, Herr Hauptmann, I did not say that,” put in the porter, coming forward.

  “Who are you?”

  “The man from whom the doll was stolen. Jacob Goggelmann, Dienstmann number 87, formerly private in the Fourth Artillery, lately messenger in the Thüringer Doll Manufactory.”

  “When was the doll stolen?”

  “Last New Year’s eve,” answered the porter.

  “And you have not seen it until to-day?”

  “No, Herr Hauptmann.”

  “Then how do you know it is the same one? I suppose it is not the only doll of its kind in Munich.”

  “I am sure of it. I was a messenger in the shop, Herr Hauptmann, and I knew everything there, just as though I had been one of the young ladies who serve the customers. Besides, you will find my name written in pencil under the pedestal.”

  “That is another matter,” said the officer, taking the Gigerl and holding it upside down to the gaslight. The reversing of the thing’s natural position produced some mysterious effect upon the musical box, and the tune which had been so rudely interrupted by Akulina’s well-aimed blow, suddenly began again from the point at which it had stopped, continuing for a few bars and then coming to an end with a sharp twang and a little click. The policemen tittered audibly, and even the captain smiled faintly in his big yellow beard. Then he knit his brows as he deciphered something which was written on the pinewood under the base.

  “You should have said so at once,” he observed. “Your name is there, as you assert.”

  “It was written to show that I was to take it. I had it in a basket with other things. I put it down a moment in the yard of the Hofbräuhaus, and when I came back the basket was gone.”

  “And what do you know about it?” The question was addressed to the Count.

  “Seeing that the porter is evidently right,” said the Count, covering with his hat the point from which the button had been torn, and holding the other hand rather nervously to his throat, as though trying to keep himself from falling to pieces, “I have nothing more to say. I will not be accused of inculpating any one in this disastrous affair. I will only say that the doll has stood since early in the year in the show window of Christian Fischelowitz, the tobacconist, who certainly had no knowledge of the way in which it was obtained by the person who brought it to him.”

  “He is an extremely respectable person,” observed the officer. “If you can prove what you say, I will not detain you further. Have you any witness here?”

  “There is Herr Dumnoff,” said the Count. The officer smiled and perpetrated an official jest.

  “Herr Dumnoff has given evidence of great strength, but owing to his peculiar situation at the present time, I cannot trust to the strength of his evidence.”

  The policemen laughed respectfully.

  “Have you no one else?” asked the officer.

  “Herr Fischelowitz will willingly vouch for what I say.”

  “At this hour, Herr Fischelowitz is doubtless asleep, and would certainly be justified in refusing to come here out of mere complaisance. I am afraid, Count Skariatine, that I must have the honour of being your host until morning.”

  “It is impossible to describe our relative positions with greater courtesy,” answered the Count, gravely, and not taking the least notice of the officer’s ironical tone. The latter looked at the speaker curiously and then suddenly changed his manner. He was convinced that he was speaking with a gentleman.

  “I regret that I am obliged to put you to such inconvenience,” he said, politely. “Treat the gentleman with every consideration,” he added, addressing the policemen in a tone of authority, “and let me have no complaints of unnecessary rudeness either.”

  “I thank you, Herr Hauptmann,” said the Count, simply.

  Thus was the Count deprived of his liberty on the very eve of his return to all the brilliant advantages of wealth and social station. It was certainly a most unfortunate train of circumstances which had led him by such quick stages from his parting with Vjera to the wooden bench and the board pillow of the police-station. It looked as though the Gigerl were possessed of an evil spirit determined to work out the Count’s destruction, as though the wretched adventurer who had first stolen it and palmed it off upon Fischelowitz had laid a curse upon it, whereby it was destined to breed dissension and strife wherever it remained and to the direct injury of whomsoever chanced to possess it for the time being. It had been the cause of serious disaster to the porter in the first instance, it had next represented to Fischelowitz a dead loss in money of fifty marks, it had become a thorn in the side to Akulina, it had led to one of the most violent quarrels she had ever engaged in with her husband, its limp and broken form had cost much broken crockery and some broken furniture to the host of the “Green Wreath Inn,” had been the cause of several ponderous blows dealt and received by Dumn
off, had produced the violent fall, upon a hard board floor, of a porter and two policemen and had ultimately brought the Count to prison for the night. Its value had become very great, for it had been paid for twice over, once by the man from whom it had been stolen, by the forfeiture of his caution money, and once by Fischelowitz in the sum of fifty marks lent to an adventurer; furthermore, the Count had solemnly pledged his word as a gentleman to pay for it a third time on the morrow, he having in his worldly possession the sum of one silver mark and two German pennies at the time of entering into the engagement. The actual sum of money paid and promised to be paid on the body of the now ruined Gigerl, now amounted, with interest, to more than four times its original value, thus constituting one of those interesting problems in real and comparative value so interesting to the ingenuous political economist, who believes that all value can be traced to supply and demand. Now, although the Gigerl was but a single doll, the supply of him, so to speak, had been surprisingly abundant, and the demand, if represented by the desire of any one person concerned to possess him, may be represented by the smallest of zeros. The consideration of so intricate a question belongs neither to the inventor of fiction nor to the historian of facts, and may therefore be abandoned to the political economist, who may, perhaps, be said to partake of the nature of both while possessing the virtues of neither.

  The Count was in prison, therefore, on the eve of his return to splendour, and his companion in captivity was Dumnoff the mujik. They found themselves in a well-ventilated room, having high grated windows, through which the stars were visible, and dimly lighted by a small gas flame which burned in a lantern of white ground glass. The place was abundantly, if not luxuriously, furnished with flat wooden pallets, each having at the head a slanting piece of board supposed to do duty for a pillow. Outside the open door a policeman paced the broad passage, a man taken from the mounted detachment and whose scabbard and spurs clattered and jingled, hour after hour, as he walked. The sound produced something half rhythmical, like a broken tune in search of itself, and the change of sentinels made no perceptible difference in the regular nature of the unceasing noise.

  Dumnoff, relieved of his handcuffs, stretched himself upon the pallet assigned to him, clasped his hands under the back of his head, and stared at the ceiling. The Count sat upon the edge of his board, crossing one knee over the other and looking at his nails, or trying to look at them in the insufficient light. In some distant part of the building a door was occasionally opened and shut, and the slight concussion sent long echoes down the stone passages. The Count sighed audibly.

  “It is not so bad, after all,” remarked Dumnoff. “I did not expect to end the evening so comfortably.”

  “It is bad enough,” said the Count. He produced a crumpled piece of newspaper which contained a little tobacco, and rolled a cigarette thoughtfully. “It is bad enough,” he repeated as he began to smoke.

  “It would have been very easy to get away, if you had done like that brute of a Schmidt who ran away and left us.”

  “I do not think Schmidt is a brute,” observed the other, blowing a huge ring of white smoke out into the dusk.

  “I did not think so either. But I had arranged it all very well for you to get away — only you would not. You see, by an accident, the key was outside the door, so I kicked the people back and locked it. It would have taken a quarter of an hour for them to open it, and if you had only jumped—”

  He turned his head, and glanced at the Count’s spare, sinewy figure.

  “You are light, too,” he continued, “and you could not have hurt yourself. I cannot understand why you stayed.”

  “Dumnoff, my friend,” said the Count, gravely, “we look at things in a different way. It is my duty to tell you that I think you behaved in the most honourable manner, under the circumstances, and I am deeply indebted to you for the gallant way in which you came back to stand by me, when you were yourself free. In a nobler warfare, such an action would have been rewarded with a cross of honour, as it truly deserved. It is true, as well, that you were not so intimately connected with the main question at stake, as I was, since it was I who was suspected of being in possession of unlawfully gotten goods. You were consequently, I think, at liberty to take your freedom if you could get it, without consulting your conscience further. Now my position was, and is, very different. I do not speak of any personal prejudice against the mere act of running away, considered as an immediate means of escape from disagreeable circumstances, with the hope of ultimate immunity from all unpleasant consequences. That is a matter of early education.”

  “I had very little early education,” observed Dumnoff. “And none at all afterwards.”

  “My friend, it is not for you and me to enter into the history of our misfortunes. We have met in the vat of poverty to be seethed alike in the brew of unhappiness. We have sat at the same daily labour, we have shared often the same fare, but there is that in each of us which we can keep sacred from the contamination of confidence, and which will withstand even the thrusts of poverty. I mean our individual selves, the better part of us, the nobler element which has suffered, as distinguished from the grosser, which may yet enjoy. But I am wandering a little. I am afraid I sometimes do. I return to the point. For me to take advantage of your generous attempt to free me would have been to act as though I had a moral cause for flight. In other words, it would have been to acknowledge that I had committed some dishonourable action.”

  “It seems to me that to get away would have been the best way out of it. They would not have caught you if you had trusted to me, and if they did not catch you they could not prove anything against you.”

  “The suspicion would have remained, and the disgrace in my own eyes,” answered the Count. “The question of physical fear is very different. I have been told that it depends upon the nerves and the action of the heart, and that courage is greatly increased by the presence of nourishment in the stomach. The same cannot be said of moral bravery, which proceeds more from the fear of seeming contemptible in our own eyes than from the wish to seem honourable in the estimation of others.”

  “I daresay,” said Dumnoff, who was growing sleepy and who understood very little of his companion’s homily.

  “Precisely,” replied the latter. “And yet even the question of physical courage is very complicated in the present case. It cannot be said, for instance, that you ran away from physical fear, after giving proof of such astonishing physical superiority. Your deeds this evening make the labours of Hercules dwindle to the proportions of mere mountebank’s tricks.”

  “Was anybody badly injured?” asked Dumnoff, suddenly aroused by the pleasing recollections of the contest.

  “I believe not seriously; I think I saw everybody whom you upset get on his feet sooner or later.”

  “Well,” said Dumnoff with a sigh, “it cannot be helped. I did my best.”

  “I should think that you would be glad,” suggested the Count. “You showed your prowess without any fatal result.”

  “Anything for a change in this dull life,” grumbled the peasant with an air of dissatisfaction.

  “With such a prospect of immediate change before me, I suppose I ought not to blame your longing for excitement. Nevertheless I consider it fortunate that nothing worse happened.”

  “You might take me with you to Russia,” said Dumnoff, with a short laugh. “That would be an excitement, at least.”

  “After the way in which you have stood by me this evening, I will not refuse you anything. If you wish it, I will take you with me. I take it for granted that you are not prevented by any especial reason from entering our country.”

  “Not that I am aware of,” laughed Dumnoff. “Do you know how I got to Germany? A gentleman from our part of the country brought me with him as coachman. One day the horses ran away in Baden-Baden, and he turned me out of the house.”

  “That was very inconsiderate of him,” observed the Count.

  “It is true that both th
e horses were killed,” said Dumnoff, thoughtfully. “And the prince broke his arm, and the carriage was in good condition for firewood, and possibly I was a little gay — just a little — though I was so much upset by the accident that I could not remember exactly what happened before. Still—”

  “Your conduct on that particular day seems to have left much to be desired,” remarked the Count with some austerity.

  “It has been my bad luck to be in a great many accidents,” said the other. “But that one was remarkable. As far as I can recollect, we drove into the Grand Duke’s four-in-hand on one side and drove out of it on the other. I never drove through a Grand Duke’s equipage on any other occasion. It was lucky that his Serenity did not happen to be in it just at the time. There you have my history in a nutshell. As you say you will take me with you, I thought you ought to know.”

  “Certainly, certainly,” answered the Count, vaguely. “I will take you with me — but not as coachman, I think, Dumnoff. We may find some more favourable sphere for your great physical strength.”

  “Anything you like. It is a good joke to dream of such a journey, is it not? Especially when one is locked up for the night in the police-station.”

  “It is certainly a relief to contemplate the prospect of such a change to-morrow,” said the Count, his expression brightening in the gloom.

  For a few moments there was silence between the two men. Dumnoff’s small eyes fixed themselves on the shadowy outlines of his companion’s face, as though trying to solve a problem far too complicated for his dull intellect.

  “I wonder whether you are really mad,” he said slowly, after a prolonged mental effort.

  The Count started slightly and stared at the ex-coachman with a frightened look.

  “Mad?” he repeated, nervously. “Who says I am mad? Why do you ask the question?”

  “Most people say so,” replied the other, evidently without any intention of giving pain. “Everybody who works with us thinks so.”

  “Everybody? Everybody? I think you are dreaming, Dumnoff. What do you mean?”