I sent Nicolai to bed, and wrapping myself in a dressing gown which I found laid out for me, sat down in a deep divan chair to await the Duke, and fell fast asleep. I woke with a start, as the great clock over the castle gateway boomed four, and saw the Duke sitting quietly smoking in a chair opposite.
He cut short my stammered apologies in the frank unceremonious manner he always used when we were alone together, and plunged at once into the matter that was uppermost in his mind, as in mine.
Now at last I learned something of the working of that League with which I had become so mysteriously entangled, and of his and Anne’s connection with it.
“For years its policy was sheerly destructive,” he told me. “Its aims were as vague as its organization was admirable. At least nine-tenths of the so-called Nihilist murders and outrages, in Russia as elsewhere, have been planned and carried out by its executive and members. To ‘remove’ all who came under their ban, including any among their own ranks who were suspected of treachery, or even of delaying in carrying out their orders, was practically its one principle. But the time for this insensate indiscriminating violence is passing,—has passed. There must be a policy that is constructive as well as destructive. The younger generation sees that more clearly every day. She—Anna—was one of the first to see and urge it; hence she fell under suspicion, especially when she refused to carry out certain orders.”
He broke off for a moment, as if in slight embarrassment.
“I think I understand,” I said. “She was ordered to ‘remove’ you, sir, and she refused?”
“That is so; at least she protested, even then, knowing that I was condemned merely as a member of the Romanoff family. Later, when we met, and learned to know each other, she found that I was no enemy, but a stanch friend to these poor peoples of Russia, striving so blindly, so desperately, to fling off the yoke that crushes them! Then it was that, with the noble courage that distinguishes her above all women I have ever met, she refused to carry out the orders given her; more than that, she has twice or thrice saved my life from other attempts on it. I have long been a member of the League, though, save herself, none other connected with it suspected the identity of a certain droshky driver, who did good service at one time and another.”
His blue eyes twinkled merrily for an instant. In his way his character was as complex as that of Anne herself,—cool, clever, courageous to a degree, but leavened with a keen sense of humor, that made him thoroughly enjoy playing the rôle of “Ivan,” even though it had brought him to his present position as a state prisoner.
“That reminds me,” I said. “How was it you got caught that time, when she and her father escaped?”
He shrugged his shoulders.