OLGA IN A NEW LIGHT.
I walked back to my rooms as I wished to cool my head and think. The interview with Christian Tueski had excited me, and what was of more importance, had kindled a hope that after all I might be able to escape the tremendous difficulties that encompassed me.
One thing in particular pleased me, for it was a double-edged knife loosening two sets of the complications. It was the promise I had given to the man to respect his wife so long as he kept faith with me. This gave me power over him, and what was of infinitely greater value to me personally, it was a shrewd defence against the wife also.
I smiled as I thought of the ingenuity of this; but I little thought what would be the actual result. It seemed then the shrewdest and cleverest, as well as the most daring thing I had done; but in the end the consequences were such as might properly have followed an act of the grossest stupidity and villainy possible. For the moment it pleased me, however, and I was in truth finding the keenest pleasure in this parrying of the thrusts which the fates were making at me.
There was a problem I could not solve, however, in the question of the power which seemed to be behind the Chief of the Police; the power which made him apparently afraid to strike me openly though so willing to trip me secretly. I could not imagine what it could be, nor whence it could come.
When I reached my rooms my sister and Paula Tueski were waiting for me in the greatest anxiety; and both were overjoyed to see me safe and apparently in high spirits. The police agents had been for the fellow I had left under lock and key; and Olga had taken care to carry out my instructions to the letter. Her quick instincts had warned her, and she had made a parade of almost affectionate friendship for the other woman during the time the men had been present.
After I arrived she could scarcely take her eyes off me, and I saw them glistening as with tears.
"I will take you home, directly," I said, carelessly, as a brother might speak. "But I have something to say first to Madame Tueski; so you must wait for a few minutes."
A look of reproach nearly found expression in hasty words, but remembering herself she said hastily, acting the part to the life:—
"Oh, you're always so mysterious, Alexis. I've no patience with you."
Then I led the other into my second sitting-room and told her much of what had passed: and when I came to that part of the interview that immediately concerned herself, she was very bitter and angry.
"You think I am a pawn to be moved where you like in your game; of no account, and the meanest thing on the board. You and he are both alike in that—but wait. Your life is mine, Alexis. I have told you."
"But you must surely see that the first consideration must be all our lives—to say nothing of our safety," I answered, rather roughly, I fear, and very unsympathetically. Her heroics rasped me. "What the deuce is the good of your loving me if your husband shuts me up in a dungeon, or sends me dancing to Siberia, or causes a dagger to let out my life blood?"
"You mean to keep the word you gave him?"
"Certainly, so long as he keeps his."
She fixed her large lustrous eyes on me and let them rest on me during a long pause of silence.
"You and he together will drive me to some desperate deed," she said, at length, very slowly. "Then perhaps you will learn what a love like mine will dare for your sake. I cannot and will not bear this separation."
She wearied me with these protests, but I said nothing and went on to question her as to whether there was any power behind her husband influencing him in regard to me. She knew nothing, but admitted that she had her suspicions.
I told her next that while he was trying to assassinate me, she might find the tables turned on him, as there was a Nihilist plot on foot to assassinate him. She paid little heed to it at first, saying that there had been many such schemes formed, all of which had proved abortive, because he was most carefully and continuously guarded. A moment later, however, her manner changed a little, and she questioned me somewhat closely concerning the matter.
"They don't choose their agents shrewdly in these things," she said, "and we hear too soon of their designs. They should choose a man like you, Alexis." She seemed to speak with a hidden meaning, and I was doubtful whether she knew anything; but I kept my doubts to myself.
"If they had done that, I had a rare chance to-night," I answered.
"A bold man or a reckless woman makes the chance," she retorted in the same manner. "I am going, Alexis:" she added, and then forced on me caresses which were vastly repulsive. But I could not reveal my true feelings until I had at any rate placed Olga in safety. My indifference and coldness were apparent to the woman, and she upbraided me with a burst of angry passion, till I had to patch up a sort of peace.
We went back to Olga and soon afterwards drove away, Olga and I setting the other down at her door.
So long as Madame Tueski was with us, Olga maintained the part of the impatient sister; but as soon as we were alone her manner changed altogether.
"I had to send for you this evening," I said, "And you saved me from a situation of great difficulty and hazard by coming so promptly. I thank you for having done so."
No reply. I glanced at her in the gloomy light in the cab and saw the profile set hard and immobile, with the lips pressed closely together.
"Storm signals out," thought I.
"I was saying I thanked you. You acted with rare discretion and did me a great service."
Not a word.
"You were not so silent just now." I hazarded.
"I was acting—with discretion." She repeated my word with that relish and enjoyment which a well regulated mind always feels about a telling sarcasm.
"And what sort of discretion is this?" I retorted, laughing.
She was silent again.
"I have a good deal to tell you in explanation."
"I have no wish to hear anything, thank you," she interposed. "I can trust your discretion"—much emphasis again on the word—"as completely as you can mine. I am glad to have been of use to you and Madame Tueski." She threw the word "use" at me as if it had been a bomb to be exploded in my face.
"What have I done that's wrong? I'm very sorry," I said.
"I beg you not to apologise. You never used to, and as you appear to be slipping back into your old habits it would be out of character to apologise—to me. I am only to be used."
"I don't a bit understand you."
There was a moment's silence, and then she could contain her indignation no longer and burst out with the cause of it.
"Why didn't you send me home immediately you returned? You could surely have given me your servant as an escort. Then you would have spared me the shame and humiliation of waiting during your private interchange of confidences with that woman."
At that instant we stopped at her house.
"Please not to come in to-night," she said. "I have had to keep certain things waiting here while I was being of use to you, and was sitting alone in your rooms; and I have now very much to do."
"I am sorry to trouble you; but I am coming in. This thing must be cleared up at once;" and I followed my very angry sister into the house.
She led the way to a small drawing-room and turning to me said coldly:—
"I am ready to hear what you wish to say."
I had been thinking quickly during the interval, and now changed my point of attack.
"I had a very serious thing to say. You gave me your promise...."
"I would rather you would not remind me of any promises," she interrupted. This was said deliberately; but then she broke through her cold formality, and with a little stamp of her foot finished angrily:—"I won't keep them. I won't be reminded of them. Things are altered—altogether altered."
"What I was going to say is..." I began, when she broke in again.
"I won't hear it. I don't want to hear any more. I wish you'd go away."
"You must hear me," I said quietly, but with some authority in my tone.
"'Must!' I don't understand you."
"Must—for your own safety."
"Thank you. I can protect myself. Your other cares and responsibilities have a prior claim on you. Will you please leave me now?"
"No, I can't go, until I've told you...."
"I will not listen! Didn't I tell you?" She was vehemence itself.
I shrugged my shoulders in despair.
"This morning..." I began; but the moment I opened my lips she broke out again with her vehement interruptions.
"Ah, things were different this morning. I had not then been insulted. Do you forget I am a Russian; and think you can treat me as you will—keep me waiting while—bah! it is unbearable. Will you go away? Is there no sense of manliness in you that will make you leave me? Must I call for assistance? I will do that if you do not leave me. You can write what you have to say. But, please, spare me the pain of seeing you again."
Her words cut me to the quick; but they roused me also.
"You had better call for assistance," I answered firmly. Then I crossed to the door, locked it, and put the key in my pocket. "I will spare you the pain of another interview; but now that I am here, I decline to go until I have explained."
"You cannot explain," she burst in. The word seemed to madden her.
"Cannot explain what?"
"That woman's kisses!"
The words appeared to leap from her lips involuntarily; and she repented them as soon as uttered; and drawing herself up she tried to appear cold and stolid. But this attempt failed completely; and in her anger at the thought behind the words and with herself for having given it utterance, she stood looking at me, her bosom heaving and tossing with agitation and her face and eyes aglow with an emotion, which with a strange delight, I saw was jealousy.
There came a long pause, during which I recalled her manner and the way she had played with my words, during one of our rides when we had spoken of Devinsky's proposal to make her his wife.
I have always been slow to read women's hearts and have generally read them wrong; but I began to study this with a sense of new and peculiar pleasure.
She was getting very dear to me for a sister.
If my guess was right, my conduct with that infernal women, Paula Tueski, must have been gall and wormwood to Olga.
How should I have relished it had the position been reversed, and Devinsky been in Paula Tueski's place?
These thoughts which flashed across me in rapid succession produced a peculiar frame of mind. I had stood a minute in silence, not looking at her, and when I raised my eyes again I was conscious of sensations toward her, that were altogether different from anything I had felt before. She had become more beautiful than ever in my eyes; I, more eagerly anxious to please and appease; while at bottom there was a dormant fear that I might be mistaken in my new reading of her actions, in which was mixed up another fear, not nearly so strong, that her anger on account of Paula Tueski might really end in our being separated.
My first act shewed the change in me.
I ceased to feel the freedom with which I had hitherto acted the part of brother, and I immediately threw open the door and stood aside that she might go out if she wished. Then I said:—
"Perhaps you are right. My conduct may be inexcusable even to save your life."
Whether there was anything in my manner that touched her—I was conscious of speaking with much less confidence than usual; or whether it was the act of unfastening the door: or whether, again, some subtle influence had set her thoughts moving in parallel columns to mine, I do not know. But her own manner changed quite as suddenly as mine; and when she caught my eyes on her, she flushed and paled with effects that made her radiantly beautiful to me.
She said not a word; and finding this, I continued:—
"I am sorry a cloud has come between us at the last, and through something that was not less hateful to me because forced by the needs of the case. We have been such friends; but...." here I handed her the permit—"you must use this at once."
She took it and read it slowly in silence, and then asked:—
"How did you get this?"
"Myself, personally, from the Chief of the Police."
"Why did you run the mad risk of going to him yourself?"
"There was no risk—not so much in going to him as in keeping away from him. He had tried to have me murdered, and I went to find out the reason."
"I told you I would not leave."
"Unless—and the condition now applies—it was necessary for my safety."
"And you?" The light of fear was in her eyes as she asked this.
"As soon as you are across the frontier I shall make a dash for my liberty also. I can't go before, because my absence would certainly bring you under suspicion."
She looked at me again very intently, her head bent slightly forward and her lips parted with the strain of a new thought; while suspicion of my motive chased the fear for my safety from her face.
"Is this to get me out of the way? I won't go!"
"Olga!"
All my honour for myself and my love for her were in that note of reproach, and they appeared to waken an echo; for then this most strange girl threw herself down on to a couch and burying her face in her hands sobbed passionately.
I turned away from the sight of her emotion—the more painful because of the strong self-reserve and force of character she had always shewn—and paced up and down the room. I forced back my own feelings and the desire to tell her what those feelings were. To do that would be worse than madness. Till we were out of Russia, we were brother and sister and the bar between us was heavier than we could hope to move.
When the storm of her sobs ceased, she remained for some minutes quite still: and I would not break the silence, knowing she was fighting her way back to self-possession.
Presently, she got up and came to me, holding out her hand.
"I will go, Alexis—we are still firm friends?"—with a little smile of wistful interrogation. "Can you forgive my temper? I was mad for the moment, I think. But I trust you. I do indeed, absolutely. I know you had no thought of insulting me. I know that. I couldn't think so meanly of you. It's hard to leave—Russia—and—and everything. And you, too—at this time. Must I really go?" A half-beseeching glance into my eyes and a pause for the answer I could not give. "Very well. I know what your silence means. Come to-morrow morning—and say"—she stopped again and bit her trembling lips to steady them as she framed the word—"and say—goodbye to me. And now, please, let me go—brother and truest friend."
She wrung my hand, and then before I could prevent her or even guess her intention, she pressed her lips to it and, with the tears again in her eyes, she went quickly away, leaving me to stare after her like a helpless fool, longing to call her back and tell her everything, and yet afraid.