Where was her father, to whom she had seemed so devotedly attached when I first knew her? Even supposing he was dead, why was he ignored in that inscription, save for the mere mention of his surname, the only indication of her mixed parentage. She had never spoken of him since that day at the hunting-lodge when she had said I must ask nothing concerning him. I had obeyed her in that, as in all else, and had even refrained from questioning Vassilitzi or any other who might have been able to tell me anything about Anthony Pendennis. Besides, there had been no time for queries or conjectures during all the feverish excitement of these days in Warsaw. But now, in this brief and solemn interlude, all the old problems recurred to my mind, as I stood on guard in the death-chamber; and I knew that I could never hope to solve them.
The ceremony was over at last. As in a dream I followed the others, and, at a low-spoken word of command, filed past the catafalque, with a last military salute, though I was no longer in uniform, for Mishka had brought me a suit of civilian clothes.
In the same dazed way I found myself later riding near the head of the procession that passed through the dark silent streets, and out into the open country. I didn’t even feel any curiosity or astonishment that a strong escort of regular cavalry—lancers—accompanied us, or when I recognized the officer in command as young Mirakoff, whom I had last seen on the morning when I was on my way to prison in Petersburg. He didn’t see me,—probably he wouldn’t have known me if he had,—and to this day I don’t know how he and his men came to be there, or how the whole thing was arranged. Anyhow, none molested us; and slowly, through the sleeping city, and along the open road, the cortège passed, ghostlike, in the dead of night. The air was piercingly cold, but the sky was clear, like a canopy of velvet spangled with great stars.
Mishka rode beside me, and at last, when we seemed to have been riding for an eternity, he laid his hand on my rein, and whispered hoarsely, “Now.”
Almost without a sound we left the ranks, turned up a cross-road, and, wheeling our horses at a few paces distant, waited for the others to go by; more unreal, more dreamlike than ever. Save for the steady tramp of the horses’ feet, the subdued jingle of the harness and accoutrements, they might have been a company of phantoms. I saw the gleam of the white pall above the black bulk of the open hearse,—watched it disappear in the darkness, and knew that the Grand Duchess had passed out of my life forever.
Still I sat, bareheaded, until the last faint sounds had died away, and the silence about us was only broken by the night whisper of the bare boughs above us.
“Come; for we have yet far to go,” Mishka said aloud, and started down the cross-road at a quick trot.