The Secret of the Night
The others said: “Ah, ah, the good Gounsovski. He knows. He knows.
Certainly, accept his supper. With Annouchka it will be fun.”
“Messieurs,” asked Rouletabille, who continued to make discoveries in
the audience, “do you know that officer who is seated at the end of a
row down there in the orchestra seats? See, he is getting up.”
“He? Why, that is Prince Galitch, who was one of the richest lords of
the North Country. Now he is practically ruined.”
“Thanks, gentlemen; certainly it is he. I know him,” said Rouletabille,
seating himself and mastering his emotion.
“They say he is a great admirer of Annouchka,” hazarded Thaddeus. Then
he walked away from the box.
“The prince has been ruined by women,” said Athanase Georgevitch, who
pretended to know the entire chronicle of gallantries in the empire.
“He also has been on good terms with Gounsovski,” continued Thaddeus.
“He passes at court, though, for an unreliable. He once made a long
visit to Tolstoi.”
“Bah! Gounsovski must have rendered some signal service to that
imprudent prince,” concluded Athanase. “But for yourself, Thaddeus, you
haven’t said what you did with Gounsovski at Bakou.”
(Rouletabille did not lose a word of what was being said around him,
although he never lost sight of the profile hidden in the black mantle
nor of Prince Galitch, his personal enemy,* who reappeared, it seemed
to him, at a very critical moment.)
* as told in “The Lady In Black.”
“I was returning from Balakani in a drojki,” said Thaddeus
Tchitchnikoff, “and I was drawing near Bakou after having seen the
debris of my oil shafts that had been burned by the Tartars, when I met
Gounsovski in the road, who, with two of his friends, found themselves
badly off with one of the wheels of their carriage broken. I stopped.
He explained to me that he had a Tartar coachman, and that this coachman
having seen an Armenian on the road before him, could find nothing
better to do than run full tilt into the Armenian’s equipage. He had
reached over and taken the reins from him, but a wheel of the carriage
was broken.” (Rouletabille quivered, because he caught a glance of
communication between Prince Galitch and Natacha, who was leaning over
the edge of her box.) “So I offered to take Gounsovski and his friends
into my carriage, and we rode all together to Bakou after Gounsovski,
who always wishes to do a service, as Athanase Georgevitch says, had
warned his Tartar coachman not to finish the Armenian.” (Prince Galitch,
at the moment the orchestra commenced the introductory music for
Annouchka’s new number, took advantage of all eyes being turned toward
the rising curtain to pass near Natacha’s seat. This time he did not
look at Natacha, but Rouletabille was sure that his lips had moved as he
went by her.)
Thaddeus continued: “It is necessary to explain that at Bakou my little
house is one of the first before you reach the quay. I had some Armenian
employees there. When arrived, what do you suppose I saw? A file of
soldiers with cannon, yes, with a cannon, on my word, turned against my
house and an officer saying quietly, ‘there it is. Fire!’” (Rouletabille
made yet another discovery--two, three discoveries. Near by, standing
back of Natacha’s seat, was a figure not unknown to the young reporter,
and there, in one of the orchestra chairs, were two other men whose
faces he had seen that same morning in Koupriane’s barracks. Here was
where a memory for faces stood him in good stead. He saw that he was not
the only person keeping close watch on Natacha.) “When I heard what the
officer said,” Thaddeus went on, “I nearly dropped out of the drojki.
I hurried to the police commissioner. He explained the affair promptly,
and I was quick to understand. During my absence one of my Armenian
employees had fired at a Tartar who was passing. For that matter, he had
killed him. The governor was informed and had ordered the house to be
bombarded, for an example, as had been done with several others. I found
Gounsovski and told him the trouble in two words. He said it wasn’t
necessary for him to interfere in the affair, that I had only to talk
to the officer. ‘Give him a good present, a hundred roubles, and he will
leave your house. I went back to the officer and took him aside; he said
he wanted to do anything that he could for me, but that the order was
positive to bombard the house. I reported his answer to Gounsovski, who
told me: ‘Tell him then to turn the muzzle of the cannon the other way
and bombard the building of the chemist across the way, then he can
always say that he mistook which house was intended.’ I did that, and he
had them turn the cannon. They bombarded the chemist’s place, and I got
out of the whole thing for the hundred roubles. Gounsovski, the good
fellow, may be a great lump of fat and be like an umbrella merchant, but
I have always been grateful to him from the bottom of my heart, you can
understand, Athanase Georgevitch.”
“What reputation has Prince Galitch at the court?” inquired Rouletabille
all at once.
“Oh, oh!” laughed the others. “Since he went so openly to visit Tolstoi
he doesn’t go to the court any more.”
“And--his opinions? What are his opinions?”
“Oh, the opinions of everybody are so mixed nowadays, nobody knows.”
Ivan Petrovitch said, “He passes among some people as very advanced and
very much compromised.”
“Yet they don’t bother him?” inquired Rouletabille.
“Pooh, pooh,” replied the gay Councilor of Empire, “it is rather he who
tries to mix with them.”
Thaddeus stooped down and said, “They say that he can’t be reached
because of the hold he has over a certain great personage in the court,
and it would be a scandal--a great scandal.”
“Be quiet, Thaddeus,” interrupted Athanase Georgevitch, roughly. “It
is easy to see that you are lately from the provinces to speak so
recklessly, but if you go on this way I shall leave.”
“Athanase Georgevitch is right; hang onto your mouth, Thaddeus,”
counseled Ivan Petrovitch.
The talkers all grew silent, for the curtain was rising. In the audience
there were mysterious allusions being made to this second number of
Annouchka, but no one seemed able to say what it was to be, and it was,
as a matter of fact, very simple. After the whirl-wind of dances and
choruses and all the splendor with which she had been accompanied the
first time, Annouchka appeared as a poor Russian peasant in a scene
representing the barren steppes, and very simply she sank to her knees
and recited her evening prayers. Annouchka was singularly beautiful.
Her aquiline nose with sensitive nostrils, the clean-cut outline of
her eyebrows, her look that now was almost tender, now menacing, always
unusual, her pale rounded cheeks and the entire expression of her face
showed clearly the strength of new ideas, spontaneity, deep resolution
and, above all, passion. The prayer was passionate. She had an admirable
contralto voice which affected the audience strangely from its very
first notes. She asked God for daily bread for everyone in the immense
Russian land, daily bread for the flesh and for the spirit, and she
stirred the tears of everyone there, to which-ever party they belonged.
And when, as her last note sped across the desolate steppe and she rose
and walked toward the miserable hut, frantic bravos from a delirious
audience told her the prodigious emotions she had aroused. Little
Rouletabille, who, not understanding the words, nevertheless caught the
spirit of that prayer, wept. Everybody wept. Ivan Petrovitch, Athanase
Georgevitch, Thaddeus Tchitchnikoff were standing up, stamping their
feet and clapping their hands like enthusiastic boys. The students, who
could be easily distinguished by the uniform green edging they wore on
their coats, uttered insensate cries. And suddenly there rose the first
strains of the national hymn. There was hesitation at first, a wavering.
But not for long. Those who had been dreading some counter-demonstration
realized that no objection could possibly be raised to a prayer for
the Tsar. All heads uncovered and the Bodje Taara Krari mounted,
unanimously, toward the stars.
Through his tears the young reporter never gave up his close watch on
Natacha. She had half risen, and, sinking back, leaned on the edge of
the box. She called, time and time again, a name that Rouletabille
could not hear in the uproar, but that he felt sure was “Annouchka!
Annouchka!” “The reckless girl,” murmured Rouletabille, and, profiting
by the general excitement, he left the box without being noticed.
He made his way through the crowd toward Natacha, whom he had sought
futilely since morning. The audience, after clamoring in vain for a
repetition of the prayer by Annouchka, commenced to disperse, and the
reporter was swept along with them for a few moments. When he reached
the range of boxes he saw that Natacha and the family she had been
with were gone. He looked on all sides without seeing the object of his
search and like a madman commenced to run through the passages, when a
sudden idea struck his blood cold. He inquired where the exit for the
artists was and as soon as it was pointed out, he hurried there. He
was not mistaken. In the front line of the crowd that waited to see
Annouchka come out he recognized Natacha, with her head enveloped in the
black mantle so that none should see her face. Besides, this corner of
the garden was in a half-gloom. The police barred the way; he could not
approach as near Natacha as he wished. He set himself to slip like a
serpent through the crowd. He was not separated from Natacha by more
than four or five persons when a great jostling commenced. Annouchka
was coming out. Cries rose: “Annouchka! Annouchka!” Rouletabille threw
himself on his knees and on all-fours succeeded in sticking his head
through into the way kept by the police for Annouchka’s passage.
There, wrapped in a great red mantle, his hat on his arm, was a man
Rouletabille immediately recognized. It was Prince Galitch. They were
hurrying to escape the impending pressure of the crowd. But Annouchka as
she passed near Natacha stopped just a second--a movement that did not
escape Rouletabille--and, turning toward her said just the one word,
“Caracho.” Then she passed on. Rouletabille got up and forced his way
back, having once more lost Natacha. He searched for her. He ran to the
carriage-way and arrived just in time to see her seated in a carriage
with the Mourazoff family. The carriage started at once in the direction
of the datcha des Iles. The young man remained standing there, thinking.
He made a gesture as though he were ready now to let luck take its
course. “In the end,” said he, “it will be better so, perhaps,” and
then, to himself, “Now to supper, my boy.”
He turned in his tracks and soon was established in the glaring light
of the restaurant. Officers standing, glass in hand, were saluting from
table to table and waving a thousand compliments with grace that was
almost feminine.
He heard his name called joyously, and recognized the voice of Ivan
Petrovitch. The three boon companions were seated over a bottle of
champagne resting in its ice-bath and were being served with tiny pates
while they waited for the supper-hour, which was now near.
Rouletabille yielded to their invitation readily enough, and accompanied
them when the head-waiter informed Thaddeus that the gentlemen were
desired in a private room. They went to the first floor and were
ushered into a large apartment whose balcony opened on the hall of
the winter-theater, empty now. But the apartment was already occupied.
Before a table covered with a shining service Gounsovski did the honors.
He received them like a servant, with his head down, an obsequious
smile, and his back bent, bowing several times as each of the guests