The Secret of the Night
to bring them all here. But--more secret agents or special police--no,
no! Good-night. All of us to bed now!”
They did not insist further. When Feodor had said, “Those are the
orders,” there was room for nothing more, not even in the way of polite
insistence.
But before going to their beds all went into the veranda, where
liqueurs were served by the brave Ermolai, as always. Matrena pushed
the wheel-chair of the general there, and he kept repeating, “No, no. No
more such people. No more police. They only bring trouble.”
“Feodor! Feodor!” sighed Matrena, whose anxiety deepened in spite of all
she could do, “they watched over your dear life.”
“Life is dear to me only because of you, Matrena Petrovna.”
“And not at all because of me, papa?” said Natacha.
“Oh, Natacha!”
He took both her hands in his. It was an affecting glimpse of family
intimacy.
From time to time, while Ermolai poured the liqueurs, Feodor struck his
band on the coverings over his leg.
“It gets better,” said he. “It gets better.”
Then melancholy showed in his rugged face, and he watched night deepen
over the isles, the golden night of St. Petersburg. It was not quite yet
the time of year for what they call the golden nights there, the “white
nights,” nights which never deepen to darkness, but they were already
beautiful in their soft clarity, caressed, here by the Gulf of Finland,
almost at the same time by the last and the first rays of the sun, by
twilight and dawn.
From the height of the veranda one of the most beautiful bits of the
isles lay in view, and the hour was so lovely that its charm thrilled
these people, of whom several, as Thaddeus, were still close to nature.
It was he, first, who called to Natacha:
“Natacha! Natacha! Sing us your ‘Soir des Iles.’”
Natacha’s voice floated out upon the peace of the islands under the
dim arched sky, light and clear as a night rose, and the guzla of Boris
accompanied it. Natacha sang:
“This is the night of the Isles--at the north of the world. The sky
presses in its stainless arms the bosom of earth, Night kisses the rose
that dawn gave to the twilight. And the night air is sweet and fresh
from across the shivering gulf, Like the breath of young girls from the
world still farther north. Beneath the two lighted horizons, sinking and
rising at once, The sun rolls rebounding from the gods at the north of
the world. In this moment, beloved, when in the clear shadows of this
rose-stained evening I am here alone with you, Respond, respond with a
heart less timid to the holy, accustomed cry of ‘Good-evening.’”
Ah, how Boris Nikolaievitch and Michael Korsakoff watched her as she
sang! Truly, no one ever can guess the anger or the love that broods in
a Slavic heart under a soldier’s tunic, whether the soldier wisely plays
at the guzla, as the correct Boris, or merely lounges, twirling his
mustache with his manicured and perfumed fingers, like Michael, the
indifferent.
Natacha ceased singing, but all seemed to be listening to her still--the
convivial group on the terrace appeared to be held in charmed attention,
and the porcelain statuettes of men on the lawn, according to the mode
of the Iles, seemed to lift on their short legs the better to hear pass
the sighing harmony of Natacha in the rose nights at the north of the
world.
Meanwhile Matrena wandered through the house from cellar to attic,
watching over her husband like a dog on guard, ready to bite, to throw
itself in the way of danger, to receive the blows, to die for its
master--and hunting for Rouletabille, who had disappeared again.
III. THE WATCH
She went out to caution the servants to a strict watch, armed to the
teeth, before the gate all night long, and she crossed the deserted
garden. Under the veranda the schwitzar was spreading a mattress for
Ermolai. She asked him if he had seen the young Frenchman anywhere, and
after the answer, could only say to herself, “Where is he, then?” Where
had Rouletabille gone? The general, whom she had carried up to his
room on her back, without any help, and had helped into bed without
assistance, was disturbed by this singular disappearance. Had someone
already carried off “their” Rouletabille? Their friends were gone and
the orderlies had taken leave without being able to say where this boy
of a journalist had gone. But it would be foolish to worry about the
disappearance of a Journalist, they had said. That kind of man--these
journalists--came, went, arrived when one least expected them, and
quitted their company--even the highest society--without formality. It
was what they called in France “leaving English fashion.” However,
it appeared it was not meant to be impolite. Perhaps he had gone to
telegraph. A journalist had to keep in touch with the telegraph at all
hours. Poor Matrena Petrovna roamed the solitary garden in tumult of
heart. There was the light in the general’s window on the first floor.
There were lights in the basement from the kitchens. There was a light
on the ground-floor near the sitting-room, from Natacha’s chamber
window. Ah, the night was hard to bear. And this night the shadows
weighed heavier than ever on the valiant breast of Matrena. As she
breathed she felt as though she lifted all the weight of the threatening
night. She examined everything--everything. All was shut tight, was
perfectly secure, and there was no one within excepting people she was
absolutely sure of--but whom, all the same, she did not allow to go
anywhere in the house excepting where their work called them. Each in
his place. That made things surer. She wished each one could remain
fixed like the porcelain statues of men out on the lawn. Even as she
thought it, here at her feet, right at her very feet, a shadow of one
of the porcelain men moved, stretched itself out, rose to its knees,
grasped her skirt and spoke in the voice of Rouletabille. Ah, good! it
was Rouletabille. “Himself, dear madame; himself.”
“Why is Ermolai in the veranda? Send him back to the kitchens and tell
the schwitzar to go to bed. The servants are enough for an ordinary
guard outside. Then you go in at once, shut the door, and don’t concern
yourself about me, dear madame. Good-night.”
Rouletabille had resumed, in the shadows, among the other porcelain
figures, his pose of a porcelain man.
Matrena Petrovna did as she was told, returned to the house, spoke to
the schwitzar, who removed to the lodge with Ermolai, and their mistress
closed the outside door. She had closed long before the door of the
kitchen stair which allowed the domestics to enter the villa from below.
Down there each night the devoted gniagnia and the faithful Ermolai
watched in turn.
Within the villa, now closed, there were on the ground-floor only
Matrena herself and her step-daughter Natacha, who slept in the chamber
off the sitting-room, and, above on the first floor, the general asleep,
or who ought to be asleep if he had taken his potion. Matrena remained
in the darkness of the drawing-room, her dark-lantern in her hand.
All her nights passed thus, gliding from door to door, from chamber to
chamber, watching over the watch of the police, not daring to stop her
stealthy promenade even to throw herself on the mattress that she had
placed across the doorway of her husband’s chamber. Did she ever sleep?
She herself could hardly say. Who else could, then? A tag of sleep here
and there, over the arm of a chair, or leaning against the wall, waked
always by some noise that she heard or dreamed, some warning, perhaps,
that she alone had heard. And to-night, to-night there is Rouletabille’s
alert guard to help her, and she feels a little less the aching terror
of watchfulness, until there surges back into her mind the recollection
that the police are no longer there. Was he right, this young man?
Certainly she could not deny that some way she feels more confidence now
that the police are gone. She does not have to spend her time watching
their shadows in the shadows, searching the darkness, the arm-chairs,
the sofas, to rouse them, to appeal in low tones to all they held
binding, by their own name and the name of their father, to promise them
a bonus that would amount to something if they watched well, to count
them in order to know where they all were, and, suddenly, to throw full
in their face the ray of light from her little dark-lantern in order to
be sure, absolutely sure, that she was face to face with them, one of
the police, and not with some other, some other with an infernal machine
under his arm. Yes, she surely had less work now that she had no longer
to watch the police. And she had less fear!
She thanked the young reporter for that. Where was he? Did he remain in
the pose of a porcelain statue all this time out there on the lawn? She
peered through the lattice of the veranda shutters and looked anxiously
out into the darkened garden. Where could he be? Was that he, down
yonder, that crouching black heap with an unlighted pipe in his mouth?
No, no. That, she knew well, was the dwarf she genuinely loved, her
little domovoi-doukh, the familiar spirit of the house, who watched with
her over the general’s life and thanks to whom serious injury had not
yet befallen Feodor Feodorovitch--one could not regard a mangled leg
that seriously. Ordinarily in her own country (she was from the Orel
district) one did not care to see the domovoi-doukh appear in flesh and
blood. When she was little she was always afraid that she would come
upon him around a turn of the path in her father’s garden. She always
thought of him as no higher than that, seated back on his haunches and
smoking his pipe. Then, after she was married, she had suddenly run
across him at a turning in the bazaar at Moscow. He was just as she
had imagined him, and she had immediately bought him, carried him
home herself and placed him, with many precautions, for he was of very
delicate porcelain, in the vestibule of the palace. And in leaving
Moscow she had been careful not to leave him there. She had carried him
herself in a case and had placed him herself on the lawn of the datcha
des Iles, that he might continue to watch over her happiness and over
the life of her Feodor. And in order that he should not be bored,
eternally smoking his pipe all alone, she had surrounded him with a
group of little porcelain genii, after the fashion of the Jardins des
Iles. Lord! how that young Frenchman had frightened her, rising suddenly
like that, without warning, on the lawn. She had believed for a moment
that it was the domovoi-doukh himself rising to stretch his legs.
Happily he had spoken at once and she had recognized his voice. And
besides, her domovoi surely would not speak French. Ah! Matrena Petrovna
breathed freely now. It seemed to her, this night, that there were two
little familiar genii watching over the house. And that was worth more
than all the police in the world, surely. How wily that little fellow
was to order all those men away. There was something it was necessary
to know; it was necessary therefore that nothing should be in the way
of learning it. As things were now, the mystery could operate without
suspicion or interference. Only one man watched it, and he had not the
air of watching. Certainly Rouletabille had not the air of constantly
watching anything. He had the manner, out in the night, of an easy
little man in porcelain, neither more nor less, yet he could
see everything--if anything were there to see--and he could hear
everything--if there were anything to hear. One passed beside him
without suspecting him, and men might talk to each other without an idea
that he heard them, and even talk to themselves according to the habit
people have sometimes when they think themselves quite alone. All the