The Secret of the Night
at the same time. The attitude of Rouletabille continued to confuse her
beyond all expression. She watched what he did as if she thought him
besotted. The dyernick on guard out in the roadway also watched the
young man through the bars of the gate in consternation, as though he
thought him a fool. Along the paths of beaten earth or cement which
offered no chance for footprints Rouletabille hurried silently. Around
him he noted that the grass of the lawn had not been trodden. And then
he paid no more attention to his steps. He seemed to study attentively
the rosy color in the east, breathing the delicacy of dawning morning in
the Isles, amid the silence of the earth, which still slumbered.
Bare-headed, face thrown back, hands behind his back, eyes raised and
fixed, he made a few steps, then suddenly stopped as if he had been
given an electric shock. As soon as he seemed to have recovered from
that shock he turned around and went a few steps back to another path,
into which he advanced, straight ahead, his face high, with the same
fixed look that he had had up to the time he so suddenly stopped, as
if something or someone advised or warned him not to go further. He
continually worked back toward the house, and thus he traversed all the
paths that led from the villa, but in all these excursions he took pains
not to place himself in the field of vision from Natacha’s window, a
restricted field because of its location just around an abutment of the
building. To ascertain about this window he crept on all-fours up to the
garden-edge that ran along the foot of the wall and had sufficient proof
that no one had jumped out that way. Then he went to rejoin Matrena in
the veranda.
“No one has come into the garden this morning,” said he, “and no one has
gone out of the villa into the garden. Now I am going to look outside
the grounds. Wait here; I’ll be back in five minutes.”
He went away, knocked discreetly on the window of the lodge and waited
some seconds. Ermolai came out and opened the gate for him. Matrena
moved to the threshold of the little sitting-room and watched Natacha’s
door with horror. She felt her legs give under her, she could not stand
up under the diabolic thought of such a crime. Ah, that arm, that arm!
reaching out, making its way, with a little shining phial in its hand.
Pains of Christ! What could there be in the damnable books over which
Natacha and her companions pored that could make such abominable crimes
possible? Ah, Natacha, Natacha! it was from her that she would have
desired the answer, straining her almost to stifling on her rough bosom
and strangling her with her own strong hand that she might not hear the
response. Ah, Natacha, Natacha, whom she had loved so much! She sank to
the floor, crept across the carpet to the door, and lay there, stretched
like a beast, and buried her head in her arms while she wept over her
daughter. Natacha, Natacha, whom she had cherished as her own child, and
who did not hear her. Ah, what use that the little fellow had gone to
search outside when the whole truth lay behind this door? Thinking of
him, she was embarrassed lest he should find her in that animalistic
posture, and she rose to her knees and worked her way over to the window
that looked out upon the Neva. The angle of the slanting blinds let her
see well enough what passed outside, and what she saw made her
spring to her feet. Below her the reporter was going through the same
incomprehensible maneuvers that she had seen him do in the garden. Three
pathways led to the little road that ran along the wall of the villa
by the bank of the Neva. The young man, still with his hands behind his
back and with his face up, took them one after the other. In the first
he stopped at the first step. He didn’t take more than two steps in the
second. In the third, which cut obliquely toward the right and seemed to
run to the bank nearest Krestowsky Ostrow, she saw him advance slowly at
first, then more quickly among the small trees and hedges. Once only
he stopped and looked closely at the trunk of a tree against which he
seemed to pick out something invisible, and then he continued to the
bank. There he sat down on a stone and appeared to reflect, and then
suddenly he cast off his jacket and trousers, picked out a certain place
on the bank across from him, finished undressing and plunged into the
stream. She saw at once that he swam like a porpoise, keeping beneath
and showing his head from time to time, breathing, then diving below the
surface again. He reached Krestowsky Ostrow in a clump of reeds. Then he
disappeared. Below him, surrounded by trees, could be seen the red tiles
of the villa which sheltered Boris and Michael. From that villa a
person could see the window of the sitting-room in General Trebassof’s
residence, but not what might occur along the bank of the river
just below its walls. An isvotchick drove along the distant route of
Krestowsky, conveying in his carriage a company of young officers and
young women who had been feasting and who sang as they rode; then deep
silence ensued. Matrena’s eyes searched for Rouletabille, but could not
find him. How long was he going to stay hidden like that? She pressed
her face against the chill window. What was she waiting for? She waited
perhaps for someone to make a move on this side, for the door near her
to open and the traitorous figure of The Other to appear.
A hand touched her carefully. She turned.
Rouletabille was there, his face all scarred by red scratches, without
collar or neck-tie, having hastily resumed his clothes. He appeared
furious as he surprised her in his disarray. She let him lead her as
though she were a child. He drew her to his room and closed the door.
“Madame,” he commenced, “it is impossible to work with you. Why in the
world have you wept not two feet from your step-daughter’s door? You and
your Koupriane, you commence to make me regret the Faubourg Poissoniere,
you know. Your step-daughter has certainly heard you. It is lucky that
she attaches no importance at all to your nocturnal phantasmagorias, and
that she has been used to them a long time. She has more sense than you,
Mademoiselle Natacha has. She sleeps, or at least she pretends to sleep,
which leaves everybody in peace. What reply will you give her if it
happens that she asks you the reason to-day for your marching and
counter-marching up and down the sitting-room and complains that you
kept her from sleeping?”
Matrena only shook her old, old head.
“No, no, she has not heard me. I was there like a shadow, like a shadow
of myself. She will never hear me. No one hears a shadow.”
Rouletabille felt returning pity for her and spoke more gently.
“In any case, it is necessary, you must understand, that she should
attach no more importance to what you have done to-night than to the
things she knows of your doing other nights. It is not the first time,
is it, that you have wandered in the sitting-room? You understand me?
And to-morrow, madame, embrace her as you always have.”
“No, not that,” she moaned. “Never that. I could not.”
“Why not?”
Matrena did not reply. She wept. He took her in his arms like a child
consoling its mother.
“Don’t cry. Don’t cry. All is not lost. Someone did leave the villa this
morning.”
“Oh, little domovoi! How is that? How is that? How did you find that
out?”
“Since we didn’t find anything inside, it was certainly necessary to
find something outside.”
“And you have found it?”
“Certainly.”
“The Virgin protect you!”
“SHE is with us. She will not desert us. I will even say that I believe
she has a special guardianship over the Isles. She watches over them
from evening to morning.”
“What are you saying?”
“Certainly. You don’t know what we call in France ‘the watchers of the
Virgin’?”
“Oh, yes, they are the webs that the dear little beasts of the good God
spin between the trees and that...”
“Exactly. You understand me and you will understand further when you
know that in the garden the first thing that struck me across the face
as I went into it was these watchers of the Virgin spun by the dear
little spiders of the good God. At first when I felt them on my face I
said to myself, ‘Hold on, no one has passed this way,’ and so I went to
search other places. The webs stopped me everywhere in the garden. But,
outside the garden, they kept out of the way and let me pass undisturbed
down a pathway which led to the Neva. So then I said to myself, ‘Now,
has the Virgin by accident overlooked her work in this pathway? Surely
not. Someone has ruined it.’ I found the shreds of them hanging to the
bushes, and so I reached the river.”
“And you threw yourself into the river, my dear angel. You swim like a
little god.”
“And I landed where the other landed. Yes, there were the reeds all
freshly broken. And I slipped in among the bushes.”
“Where to?”
“Up to the Villa Krestowsky, madame--where they both live.”
“Ah, it was from there someone came?”
There was a silence between them.
She questioned:
“Boris?”
“Someone who came from the villa and who returned there. Boris or
Michael, or another. They went and returned through the reeds. But in
coming they used a boat; they returned by swimming.”
Her customary agitation reasserted itself.
She demanded ardently:
“And you are sure that he came here and that he left here?”
“Yes, I am sure of it.”
“How?”
“By the sitting-room window.”
“It is impossible, for we found it locked.”
“It is possible, if someone closed it behind him.”
“Ah!”
She commenced to tremble again, and, falling back into her nightmarish
horror, she no longer wasted fond expletives on her domovoi as on a dear
little angel who had just rendered a service ten times more precious to
her than life. While he listened patiently, she said brutally:
“Why did you keep me from throwing myself on him, from rushing upon him
as he opened the door? Ah, I would have, I would have... we would know.”
“No. At the least noise he would have closed the door. A turn of the key
and he would have escaped forever. And he would have been warned.”
“Careless boy! Why then, if you knew he was going to come, didn’t you
leave me in the bedroom and you watch below yourself?”
“Because so long as I was below he would not have come. He only comes
when there is no one downstairs.”
“Ah, Saints Peter and Paul pity a poor woman. Who do you think it is,
then? Who do you think it is? I can’t think any more. Tell me, tell me
that. You ought to know--you know everything. Come--who? I demand the
truth. Who? Still some agent of the Committee, of the Central Committee?
Still the Nihilists?”
“If it was only that!” said Rouletabille quietly.
“You have sworn to drive me mad! What do you mean by your ‘if it was
only that’?”
Rouletabille, imperturbable, did not reply.
“What have you done with the potion?” said he.
“The potion? The glass of the crime! I have locked it in my room, in the
cupboard--safe, safe!”
“Ah, but, madame, it is necessary to replace it where you took it from.”
“What!”
“Yes, after having poured the poison into a phial, to wash the glass and
fill it with another potion.”
“You are right. You think of everything. If the general wakes and wants
his potion, he must not be suspicious of anything, and he must be able
to have his drink.”
“It is not necessary that he should drink.”
“Well, then, why have the drink there?”
“So that the person can be sure, madame, that if he has not drunk it is
simply because he has not wished to. A pure chance, madame, that he is
not poisoned. You understand me this time?”
“Yes, yes. O Christ! But how now, if the general wakes and wishes to
drink his narcotic?”
“Tell him I forbid it. And here is another thing you must do.