Kitabı oku: «Marie Tarnowska», sayfa 11

XXXIII

I was ill in bed for a long time. I lay supine and motionless, feeling—as once, long before—as if I were lying at the bottom of a well. In the distance, far above me, life and the world went whirling on; but nothing in me or of me stirred, except that at every pulse-beat my life-blood seemed to be gently, inexorably ebbing away. The doctors bent over me with anxious faces; on my body I felt the burning weight of ice; my arteries contracted under the grip of ergot and chloride of iron. Still slowly and inexorably I glided, as on a smooth and shallow river, towards death.

Tioka and Grania had been sent to stay with friends in Kharkov.

Naumoff came every day to ask for news, and sent me flowers; but he was never allowed to see me. Kamarowsky had permission to come into my room for ten minutes every morning, but he was not allowed to speak to me.

Prilukoff, locked in my rooms, watched over me night and day.

Nobody knew of his existence, for no one was allowed to enter my apartment. How and when he slept and took his meals I do not know. Perhaps Elise looked after that. He undoubtedly grew thinner, more haggard and spectral every day with sleeplessness, fasting and anxiety.

Night and day he sat at my bedside watching me. Sometimes, as I lay prostrate with closed eyes, I said to myself that I must open them and look at him; but so great seemed the effort of raising my heavy eyelids, that frequently hours passed and I could not do so. When at last I lifted my leaden lashes, I saw him, always sitting motionless beside me with his gaze fixed on my face. With renewed effort I faintly contracted the muscles of my face and attempted to smile at him. Then, worn out with fatigue, I dropped my heavy lids and my soul floated away again towards unconsciousness....

When I began to get better I noticed to my amazement that Prilukoff talked to himself all the time. Perhaps he had done so from the first, but then I was too weak to understand or even to hear him. Now that a little strength was coming back to me each day, I could hear and comprehend the words he uttered; it was a succession of imprecations, of incoherent and disconnected maledictions hurled against Naumoff and Kamarowsky, who as he thought had snatched my heart from him, and would be the ruin and the death of me. I could hear him murmuring:

“They must be got rid of; we have sworn it. They must die.”

Towards evening his meager face grew red as if with fever, and his mutterings increased, became more rapid and excited. He would bend over me with his nightmare face as I lay weak and helpless on my pillows.

“They are outside there, in the corridor, both of them. I can hear them walking up and down, whispering together—talking about you. But they are doomed, are they not? Irrevocably doomed. You have sworn it. Tell me that it is so.”

I faltered “Yes,” hoping to silence him, but he never ceased his uncanny mutterings; and the idea of murder completely possessed his disordered brain. Elise, moving like a little frightened ghost through the locked and darkened rooms, frequently attempted to come to my aid.

“Go away; leave her alone,” she would say to Prilukoff. “Do you want her to fall ill again? Why don't you go to sleep? Why don't you eat? Why don't you go out?”

But Prilukoff stared at her with vacant eyes, then went into the dining-room and drank some vodka, and soon he was bending over me again.

“Mind, I am not going to do it alone,” he whispered, “so that afterwards you would be afraid and horrified of me. No, no. You shall help me. You shall attend to one, and I to the other.”

By degrees, as strength returned to me and dispelled the torpor that had numbed my brain, I understood Prilukoff's ravings, and was aghast at them. Absorbed in his monstrous dream, he delighted in planning all the details of the double crime.

“What I want is to be alone with the man I saw holding you in his arms the other evening.” He ground his teeth. “As for your betrothed, you shall give him a dose of curare or atropine. An exquisite wedding cup for the bridegroom!”

Then I burst into tears of terror and weakness, while the indignant Elise, hastening to my aid, would grasp Prilukoff's arm and compel him to leave me. He would sit gloomily in a corner, or go into the adjoining room, but a little while afterwards he was there again, raving as before.

“Elise,” I whispered to her one evening, “I am afraid, I am terribly afraid of him.”

“Shall I tell some one about it? Shall I tell Monsieur the Count?” exclaimed Elise.

“No, no,” I cried.

“Might I—might I tell Monsieur Naumoff?”

I hesitated; but when I recalled those golden eyes that turned to me filled with such trust and adoration I shook my head. “No, tell no one, Elise, tell no one.” And I hid my face in the pillows.

At last a day came when I was able to be up for an hour, and it was no longer possible to prevent Kamarowsky from coming to see me. Prilukoff refused to go away; I could not get him to stir from my room. At last, having compelled me to repeat the abominable vow, having forced me to invoke once more the seraphic image of little Tioka as tutelar genius of a monstrous crime, he went away, passing through my dressing-room to an outer passage at the back of the hotel.

Elise dressed me and placed me in an armchair near the window, where I reclined, trembling and weak. Then I sent word to Count Kamarowsky that I would see him.

He came in full of emotion and joy. “At last, at last you are better,” he cried, his kind eyes alight with pleasure. “But how pale you are, how dreadfully pale.” And bending over me, he kissed my hair with infinite tenderness.

As I saw him standing before me, smiling and well, the murderous ravings of Prilukoff and my own iniquitous vow seemed but a figment of my morbid fancy, a half-forgotten illusion of my delirium, dissolving and fading away like a dark dream at daylight.

Kamarowsky held my hand tightly clasped in his, as if he were half afraid I might vanish from him. “What a poor little blue-white hand!” he said. “You have become quite transparent, Mura; I think I can look right through you and see your soul, trembling and flickering like a little flame!”

I smiled at him. All my morbid fear and dislike of him, even as all my sudden insensate infatuation for Naumoff, was spent. Nothing remained of the storm my soul and senses had passed through but a limitless weakness and languor. I yearned to rest, to sleep, to sink out of life and be no more....

A few moments later they announced Naumoff, who had brought me some roses. I was neither glad nor sorry to see him. Punctually when an hour had elapsed Elise Perrier sent my visitors away and put me to bed again.

I fell asleep almost immediately.

When I reopened my eyes, twilight filled my room with shadows and there was Prilukoff, sitting beside my bed, talking to himself about murder, revenge and poison.

XXXIV

Every day my fear of Prilukoff increased. I had only one thought—to escape from him, to go far away where he could never find me; better still, to hide with Tioka and Elise in some distant spot, where neither this terrible maniac nor yet Naumoff, nor even Kamarowsky, could ever reach me.

I thought of Otrada, my home. But how could my unhappy father protect me against the loving persistence of Kamarowsky, against Naumoff's passionate daring, or Prilukoff's diabolic designs?

In the rare moments when I was alone with Elise, we talked it over. In trembling whispers, glancing constantly round lest the Scorpion should be on the watch, we concerted the manner of our flight.

We made a thousand different plans, all equally extravagant and impracticable. In our luxurious hotel rooms we were imprisoned like mice in a trap. We never opened a door without finding a maid awaiting our orders, or a zealous and obsequious waiter bowing to us, or Kamarowsky asking for news, or Naumoff waiting with a bunch of flowers in his hand.

We closed the door, and found ourselves shut up with Prilukoff, ferocious and maniacal, who glowered at us with the eye of a tiger.

A thousand times in my weakness and despair I was on the point of throwing the door wide open and calling for help—calling Kamarowsky and Naumoff, and crying to them: “Look! a man is shut up in here. For days and days he has been torturing and threatening me. The man is a criminal and a thief, and he has been my lover. Save me from him!”

But then I pictured to myself the scene of violence that would follow, the room echoing with revolver shots; and at the mere thought of it, in my weak and exhausted state, I fell into long fainting fits from which Elise had the greatest difficulty in reviving me.

One morning Elise had an idea: “Let us confide in the doctor.”

I agreed. But the thought agitated me so that when the doctor came he found me trembling, with a rapid, irregular pulse and panting breath.

“Doctor—” I began.

“Ah, but this is bad, very bad. What is the meaning of all this agitation? Did you sit up too long? If you are not a better patient, I shall have to complain of you to my friend Paul.”

His friend Paul! True. He was a friend, an intimate friend, of Kamarowsky's. How could I ever have had the idea that he would keep our secret, that he would not betray my intended flight? It was a crazy notion of Elise's. I cast a significant glance at her, and was silent.

He prescribed bromides and recommended absolute rest of body and mind. Scarcely was he gone when to my astonishment the long curtain that hung in front of an alcove where Elise kept my dresses moved slightly. Then they parted, and Prilukoff appeared.

Ah! he had not gone out as he had pretended when the doctor had been announced! He had hidden himself. What if I had spoken?

My fear of him turned to frenzy: I thought him endowed with supernatural powers. My room seemed to be filled with innumerable Prilukoffs peering out at me from every corner. I clung to Elise. “We must go away, we must go away to-morrow,” I whispered. “Do you understand?”

“Yes, madame,” was Elise's firm and humble reply.

“Send to fetch little Tioka; send for him at once.”

“Yes, madame.”

Later, while she was dressing me, she stooped to draw on my stocking—Prilukoff was reading in the adjoining room—and she murmured:

“We have no money to travel with.”

“You must ask Count Kamarowsky for some; he will give you all we want,” I whispered.

“Not without asking what it is for. We shall need a great deal.”

“Oh, Elise, think, think of something,” I sighed, and felt myself turning faint.

“What are you two mumbling and plotting?” growled Prilukoff's voice from the adjoining room.

We were silent.

Tenderly and anxiously assisted by Kamarowsky and Elise I went down to the terrace that day, and spent the afternoon reclining on a couch in the mild spring sunshine, with eyes closed and every limb relaxed. I thought of our impending flight. Kamarowsky, seated beside me, kept silence, thinking I was asleep.

Shortly afterwards I heard Tioka's quick little footsteps running across the terrace towards us. Kamarowsky doubtless warned him to keep very quiet, for I heard him stepping nearer on tip-toe, and without a word he clambered on to Kamarowsky's knee and laid his fair head confidingly against his shoulder.

Beneath my drooping lashes, I gazed at them, and thought of the hideous plot that was weaving itself round this kind and generous man, who all unknowing pressed forward towards treachery and death; and I thought of the iniquitous oath which had placed a circlet of blood round that fair childish head.

With a sob I raised myself and stretched out my arms to them both.

········

It was eleven o'clock on the following night. Elise put out the lights and prepared the bromide and water on my little table. Prilukoff was rambling backwards and forwards between bedroom and drawing-room, smoking a cigarette.

“Elise,” I whispered. “Are we ready?”

Elise nodded.

“Elise, when? When is it to be?”

“Hush, madame. Later on, towards morning; as soon”—with her head she indicated Prilukoff—“as soon as he is asleep.”

“But he never sleeps, Elise!”

Elise looked at me. “He will sleep to-night,” she said; and there was an icy hardness in her tone that I had never heard before.

“Why will he sleep? How can you know?”

Before she could answer, Prilukoff reappeared in the doorway. He had a glass of vodka in his hand.

“This accursed throat!” he said, throwing his cigarette away and putting his hand to his neck. “Everything I swallow burns and scratches me.” He coughed and cleared his throat. “You can go, Elise. I shall see to anything your mistress needs.”

Elise did not reply. With a hard, pinched face she poured the water into my glass and dropped two little bromide tablets into it. Then with her back turned to Prilukoff she fixed her eyes upon me and moved her lips: “Do not drink.” She formulated the words clearly but without sound. I stared at her in bewilderment, and she made the movement with her lips again: “Do not drink anything.” Then seeing that, notwithstanding my astonishment, I had understood her, she said respectfully: “Good night, madame,” and left the room.

She went out by the bath-room door, of which she always kept the key.

Prilukoff dropped into an armchair and yawned. “This accursed throat,” he repeated.

He poured out a glass of water from the crystal carafe on my table and swallowed it at a gulp. Then he coughed violently.

“The devil!” he exclaimed. “This too! It tastes like some beastly concoction of—of chloral.” He coughed and yawned again. Then he leaned his head against my bed. A few moments later he started up.

“The devil!” he repeated, rising to his feet. I saw him go to the little table on which Elise every evening left some coffee ready on a spirit lamp; he lit it, and I dreamily watched the thin blue waverings of the flame. While the coffee was heating Prilukoff constantly cleared his throat, with the same murmured oath. Now he poured the smoking coffee into a cup and sipped it. “By all the infernal powers—” he cried, and turned suddenly to look at me.

I did not dare to shut my eyes, much as I should have liked to do so. He came up to my bed and bending over me looked me in the face. Then he touched my shoulder.

“See here!”

I drooped my eyelids drowsily. “Yes, dear! What is it?”

“Just taste this coffee,” and he pushed the cup against my lips.

I sat up and with a smile took the cup from his hands.

“It burns,” I said, barely touching it with my lips and making a little grimace.

“Drink it!” he roared in a terrible voice, though his eyes were half shut as if he could not keep awake.

I took a sip of the coffee: it scraped my throat like a rake. I thought of Elise and understood. For a moment the idea flashed through my brain to say that I found nothing the matter with it. Then I changed my mind.

“Good heavens!” I exclaimed. “What have they put in this coffee? It tastes like poison!”

Prilukoff bent still closer over me.

“If you had said it was all right, I should have strangled you.”

My teeth chattered, partly through the taste of the chloral, partly through my fear of Prilukoff.

“Have you drunk much of it?” I gasped. “You ought to call for help.”

But Prilukoff had sunk into an armchair, and already, with his head rolled back and his mouth open, he slept.

XXXV

How did we three hapless, terrified creatures manage to escape from the hotel that night?

Tioka, wakened out of his sleep at three o'clock, kept on whimpering.

“Where are we going? I am afraid. I want Papa Paul! Call Papa Paul.”

As we descended the dark staircase a night porter, dozing in the hall, started up and came towards us, blinking and yawning. When he caught sight of Elise, laden with shawls and medicine bottles—which constituted all our luggage—he seemed greatly astonished.

For a moment no one spoke. Then: “I am feeling ill,” I said. “We are going to the doctor. Please call a carriage for me.”

“But excuse me, madame,” stammered the man. “Had I not better telephone to the doctor to come to the hotel?” His eyes wandered suspiciously from me to the lachrymose Tioka, and from Tioka to Elise and her burdens.

“Open the door,” said Elise authoritatively, “and call a carriage, at once.”

The man shook his head.

Then I saw Elise gather all the shawls into a heap on her left arm, as with her right hand she searched for something under her cloak. She drew out a crumpled piece of paper, and with a gesture of solemn deliberation she proffered it to the man. It was a banknote of a hundred rubles.

The man took the note, stared at it, and turned it round and round in his fingers. Then he raised his eyes and gazed in stupefaction at Elise.

“Open that door and call a carriage,” commanded Elise, in a thin voice.

The man obeyed. As the large door swung back we could see that it was nearly dawn; the sound of distant church bells came to us across the clear, keen air. Elise raised her hand to her forehead and made the sign of the cross.... She had plundered the white elephant!

Oh, Elise Perrier, not least among my great pangs of remorse is the thought that I have dragged you down into my own dishonor. For me and through me, your honest hard-working hand and your innocent soul were stained with guilt.

While we stood waiting for the man to return, I thought I heard a door open and close overhead.

I started. “Could it be Prilukoff?” I gasped to Elise.

She shook her head.

“Elise, what have you done to him?”

“I put chloral into everything—into everything,” and Elise shuddered.

“Oh, Elise! What if he were to die?”

She made no answer.

“And if we were to be sent to prison?”

The bells were ringing joyfully in the limpid Easter dawn.

Elise closed her eyes, and her lips moved: “Dear God of Eastertide, give us Thy blessing.”

Tioka stopped crying to look at her. Then with an enchanting smile he did as she had done. He closed his blue eyes, which were still full of tears, and said: “Dear God of Eastertide, give us Thy blessing.”

The days swung forward.

Prilukoff was the first to discover us. We had been hidden in Vienna, in the little Hotel Victoria, less than a week, when one morning he stood before our terror-stricken eyes.

He was derisive and sarcastic; but finding us alone—without Kamarowsky, without Naumoff—the maleficent frenzy that possessed him at Orel seemed to have vanished. He was soon quite genial and good-humored; he was once more the Prilukoff we had known at Moscow, the trusty knight—Elise's Lohengrin!

He did not speak of the past; he made no allusion to the chloral. Neither did he ever recall his murderous purposes; and sometimes I thought that I had dreamt it all. Cheerful and light-hearted, he took us out for drives in carriages and motors, to the Prater, to the Brühl, to the Semmering; he insisted upon our going with him to theaters, concerts and cabarets.

And to pay for it all we had recourse to the black leather satchel. When any money was required, we found it there. No accounts were kept. Simply, and as a matter of course, we dipped into the lacerated body of the white elephant and took what we needed.

I let myself drift with the tide; I gave no thought either to the future or the past, but yielded myself passively to my fate like a straw afloat on the water....

One day I saw in the newspapers that Kamarowsky was putting in motion the police of every city in Europe in his efforts to find me. Then, on Prilukoff's advice, I sent Elise to Neuchâtel to telegraph to him from there in my name, in order to tranquilize him and mislead his inquiries.

No sooner was the name of Kamarowsky mentioned between us than Prilukoff became sullen and gloomy again. He sulked and glowered at me, and passed the whole day without speaking a word.

On this particular day we had taken a box at the Theater An der Wien, having promised Tioka that he should hear “The Merry Widow.” Long before it was time to go, the little fellow was dressed and ready, jumping up and down in front of the window.

“Let us make haste,” he cried. “The carriage will be tired of waiting. Let us make haste!”

Suddenly he uttered a shriek of joy. “Mother, mother, look! There is Papa Paul! I can see him—he has just passed. Papa Paul!” he shouted with all his might.

Prilukoff caught him by his little jacket and drew him roughly from the window. Then he himself looked out.

“Sure enough,” he said, shutting the window and looking at me with that terrible crooked smile I had learned to dread. “It is Kamarowsky.”

There was a moment's silence. Then he said: “And now I have had enough of this. We will end it.” Murder gleamed in his eyes.

I clasped Tioka in my arms—the child was quite sad and hurt by Prilukoff's sudden rudeness—and as I kissed his soft curls I breathed Elise's prayer: “Dear God of Eastertide, give us Thy blessing.”

But alas! it was Easter no longer.

In spite of what had happened, we went to the theater that night. And there, while the music swayed us in the undulating rhythm of the waltz, and little Tioka gazed enraptured at the stage, Prilukoff, sitting behind me in the shadow, formulated his plans for the crime.

“You have sworn it on your child, remember. If you break your oath, he will be the sufferer.”

Tioka turned to us with shrill laughter. “Oh, look, mama, how beautiful it all is! Look at that fat policeman dancing.”

“When Kamarowsky finds you here—” Prilukoff went on; but I interrupted him.

“No, no. Let us leave Vienna at once.”

“It is useless. He will find us all the same. You are too striking,” he added, “to pass unobserved.” And with a cynical laugh he surveyed me from head to foot. “He had better not find me with you. I shall remain at the Hotel Victoria; but you and Tioka must go to the Bristol, and when that man joins you, this is what you must do—”

His iniquitous suggestions floated on the buoyant waltz music like carrion on the surface of a sparkling stream.

I shuddered in horror. “No, no,” I murmured. “Have pity! No … no!”

Oh! that music of Lehar's, that every one knows and every one whistles, and that is played by every organ at every street-corner—what monstrous secrets does it murmur to my heart!

 
Ich gehe zu Maxim,
Da bin ich sehr intim…
 

The joyous verses ring in my ears like the shrieks of maleficent Furies, scourging me with nefarious counsels and diabolic commands....

And while little Tioka laughs and claps his hands, I, his mother, sink ever deeper and deeper into the gulf of despair; and crime, like a sea of mire, closes its corrupt waves over my head.