In that hour of supreme agony there was not a word spoken of the loss of a throne. Alexandra Feodorovna’s whole heart was with her husband, her sole fears that he might be in danger and that their boy might be taken from them. At once she began to send frantic telegrams to the Emperor begging him to come home as soon as possible. With the refinement of cruelty which marked the whole conduct of the Provisional Government in those days these telegrams were returned to the Empress marked in blue pencil: “Address of person mentioned unknown.”
Not even this insolence nor all her fears broke the sublime courage of the Empress. When next morning she entered my sickroom and saw by my tear-drenched face that I knew what had happened her only visible emotion was a slight irritation that other lips than her own had brought me the news. “They should have known that I preferred to tell you myself,” she said. It was only when gone her rounds of the palace and was alone in her own bedroom that she finally gave way to her grief. “Mama cried terribly,” little Grand Duchess Marie told me. “I cried too, but not more than I could help, for poor Mama’s sake.” Never in my life, I am certain, shall I behold such proud fortitude as was shown all through those days of wreck and disaster by the Empress and her children. Not one single word of bitterness or resentment passed their lips. “You know, Annia,” said the Empress gently, “all is finished for our Russia. But we must not blame the people or the soldiers for what has happened.” Too well we knew on whose shoulders the burden of responsibility really rested.
By this time Olga and Alexei were decidedly better, but Tatiana and Anastasie were still very ill and Marie was in the first serious stage of the disease. The Empress in her hospital uniform moved tirelessly from one bed to another. Perceiving that from my floor of the palace practically every servant had fled, even my nurses and my once devoted Jouk having yielded to the general panic, she found people to move my bed upstairs to the old nursery of the Emperor. We were now almost alone in the palace. My father’s resignation having been demanded and of course given, my parents were detained in Petrograd.
Days passed and still no word came from the Emperor. The Empress’s endurance had almost reached its breaking point when there came to the palace a young woman, the wife of an obscure officer, who threw herself at the feet of the Empress and begged to be allowed the dangerous task of getting a letter through to the Emperor. Gratefully indeed did the Empress accept the offer, and within an hour the brave woman was on her way to Mogiloff. How she managed to reach headquarters, how she passed the cordon of soldiers and finally succeeded in delivering to the captive Emperor his wife’s letter we never knew, but all honor to this heroic woman, she did it.
The palace was now full of Revolutionary soldiers, quite drunk with their new liberty. Their heavy boots tramped through all the rooms and corridors, and groups of dirty, unshaven men were constantly pushing their way into the nurseries bawling out hoarsely: “Show us Alexei!” For it was the heir who most of all aroused the interest and curiosity of the mob. Meanwhile, behind closed doors and anxiously awaiting the arrival of the Emperor, the Empress and her few faithful friends were at work forestalling the coming of Kerensky by burning and destroying letters and diaries, intimate personal records too precious to be allowed to fall into the ruthless hands of enemies.
CHAPTER XV
IN anxiety almost unbearable we waited until the morning of March 9 (Russian) the arrival of the Emperor. I was still confined to my bed and Dr. Botkine was making me his first visit of the day when my door flew open and Mme. Dehn, pale with excitement, rushed to my bedside exclaiming breathlessly: “He has come!” As soon as she could command words she described the arrival of the Emperor, not as of yore attended, but guarded like a prisoner by armed soldiers. The Empress was with Alexei when the motor cars drove into the palace grounds, and Mme. Dehn told how she sprang to her feet overjoyed and ran like a schoolgirl down the stairs and through the long corridors to meet her husband. For a time at least the happiness of reunion blotted out the suspense of the past and the gloomy uncertainty of the future. But afterwards, alone, behind their own closed doors, the emotion of the betrayed and deserted Emperor completely overcame his self-control and he sobbed like a child on the breast of his wife. It was four o’clock in the afternoon before she could come to me, and when she came I read in her white, drawn face the whole story of the ordeal through which she had passed. With prideful composure she related the events of the day. I tried to match her in courage but I am afraid I failed. I, who in all the twelve years of my life in the palace had but three times seen tears in the eyes of the Emperor, was entirely overwhelmed at her recital.
“He will not break down a second time,” she said with a brave smile. “He is walking in the garden now. Come to the window and see.” She helped me to the window and herself pulled aside the curtain. Never, never while I live shall I forget what we saw, we two, clinging together in shame and sorrow for our disgraced country. Below in the garden of the palace which had been his home for twenty years stood the man who until a few days before had been Tsar of all the Russias. With him was his faithful friend Prince Dolgorouky, and surrounding them were six soldiers, say rather six hooligans, armed with rifles. With their fists and with the butts of their guns they pushed the Emperor this way and that as though he were some wretched vagrant they were baiting in a country road. “You can’t go there, Gospodin Polkovnik (Mr. Colonel).” “We don’t permit you to walk in that direction, Gospodin Polkovnik.” “Stand back when you are commanded, Gospodin Polkovnik.” The Emperor, apparently unmoved, looked from one of these coarse brutes to another and with great dignity turned and walked back towards the palace. I had been a very sick woman, and I was now hardly fit to stand on my feet. The light went out suddenly and I fainted. But the Empress did not faint. She got me back to my bed, fetched cold water, and when I awoke it was to feel her cool hand bathing my head. From her calm and detached manner no one could have guessed that the scene we had just witnessed was part also of her own tragedy. Before leaving me she said as to a child: “If you will promise to be very good and not cry he shall come to see you this evening.”
After dinner they came, the Emperor and Empress with our friend Lili Dehn. The two women sat down at a table with their needlework leaving the Emperor free to sit by my bed and talk to me privately. I have tried to show Nicholas II as a human person, with human emotions, and I have no desire now to represent him, in the hour of his humiliation, as other than a man feeling keenly and acutely the bitterness of his position. I had been unable until the day of his return to realize with any degree of clarity the full extent of his calamity. It was to me almost unbelievable that his enemies, who had so long plotted and schemed for his overthrow, had at last succeeded. It was beyond reason that the Emperor, the finest and best of the whole Romanoff family, should be allowed to fall under the feet of his decadent, treacherous kinsmen and subjects. But the Emperor, his eyes hard and glistening, told me that it was indeed true. And he added: “If all Russia came to me now on their knees I would never return.”
With tears in his voice he spoke of the men, his most trusted relations and friends, who had turned against him and caused his downfall. He read me telegrams from Brusiloff, Alexieff, and other of his generals, others from members of the family, including a message from Nicholai Nicholaievitch, in which the writers “on their knees” begged his Imperial Majesty, for the salvation of Russia, to abdicate. In whose favor did they wish him to abdicate? The weak and ineffectual Duma? The great untaught masses of the people? No, to their own blind and self-seeking oligarchy, which, under a regent of its own choosing, would rule the boy Alexei and through him the people and the uncounted wealth of Russia. But this at least the Emperor could and did prevent. Both his heart and his mind forbade him to abdicate in favor of the Tsarevitch. “My boy I will not give to them,” he said feelingly. “Let them get some one else, Michail, if he thinks he is strong enough.”