At ten o'clock on the following morning Ivan, quiet, self-possessed, entirely himself again, came down to the small drawing-room for his morning tea. He knew that a mountain of work lay before him; though there were people enough to execute his orders. But the only command which the obsequious Piotr could extract from the young Prince was this:
"Till twelve o'clock I will neither speak to nor see a single person. At that hour have the whole household assembled in the state drawing-room." Only this bit of news could the excited valet of the dead Prince carry out to the kitchen; but the effect of his announcement was to send every servant, male and female, scudding across the court to their own building, to prepare themselves for the inspection of the new master.
Ivan, meantime, was occupying himself with the one matter which must be concealed from all the throng of executors, lawyers and officials of administration, by which he would presently be surrounded. During the night he had pondered on what was to be done concerning the affair of which his father had spoken at such length. And by now his course was chosen; his way looked clear; his mother, from on high, seemed smiling down on him in loving approval.
At half-past ten he stood alone in that sanctum which was to know its grim master no more. Behind him was a locked door; before him, the huge map, now entirely covered with the minute black figures that constituted the life-misery of many a respected malefactor;—that map which Grand-Dukes had prayed to look upon, and which, saving Piotr, and twice, in his boyhood, Ivan, no human eye but its creator's had ever seen.
Before this sinister cipher stood Michael's son; and in his hand was the little slip of parchment by means of which he was to read the strange secrets of his father's rise and position. For some minutes Ivan stood debating within himself as to his right to read so much as a fragment of this condemnatory document. If he began, what great name might not become forever dishonored in his thoughts?—Bah!—What need to fear for good men, after all? With a cynical shrug, he advanced to where the parchment hung; and then, referring each second to his key, began to read at the top of one of the narrow columns. After fifteen minutes, he drew the great table across the room, pulled pencil and paper towards him, and set to work systematically. It was an hour before he had translated the following disjointed items:
"March 18, 1832: Contract for new outfits of line regiments Nos. 87-8-9 and 90, granted to C—— A—— (one of the Grand-Dukes). Perquisites understood, 30,000 roubles. Actual per. 280,000 roubles: all cloth, arms, and ammunitions being lowered two grades. Suspect Count A—— of complicity. Not proved. Remonstrance from H—— E—— overruled."
"December, 1853. Indictment prepared, November 11th, for inquiry into recent deaths of Prince D—— and his heir, attributed to poisoning, by person or persons unknown (?). November 20th, Princess D—— engaged in secret service work for Alexis G——. November 26th. This day investigation dropped; reconsidered verdict states poisoning to have been by sterlet caviar. Public feeling high. Note: Wait definite development. Try woman first."
Over these typical paragraphs Ivan sat for some time. They were what he had expected.—He himself, indeed, remembered well enough the D—— scandal, and the subsequent disappearance of the notorious Princess, who had been her husband's second wife, and had hated the heir that took precedence of her own son.—Had Gregoriev finally exposed her? or had accident taken from Prince Michael this hold upon a powerful minister, and one of the greatest beauties of her time?—Faugh!—Sickening, indeed, this wretched system of blackmail, more systematic, daring and successful than ever blackmail had been before!—That map! Good Heaven! What further revelations might it not contain?—What great name of Russia was absent from it?—Crime, intrigue, peculation, faithlessness, treachery, treason—by these sins of others had his father risen to his position and his wealth. Trusting to the ever-renewed baseness, cupidity, passion of humankind, and their cowardice in the possibility of discovery, Michael had known that his sources of revenue would never fail, his victims never rebel. So much, indeed, he had openly acknowledged. His defence had been: "No innocent person could ever be touched by me. One mistake on my part, and I should be lost. Whatever I may have done, Ivan, know that I have never been the coward, never the remorseless traitor, that my victims are and have been." And the man who could say this, the man who had taken pride in his skilful manipulation of the world's evil, and had used it all his life, had been his own father!
Little by little Ivan's rising emotions of shame and repudiation had grown into an excitement of righteous anger. All the blood in his body seemed to have rushed to his brain and to have remained there, throbbing. Before his mental eyes rose mental pictures of the events in his father's life: deeds of dishonor unregretted, that ate poisonously into Ivan's sensitive intelligence. The fearful significance of the foundations of the enormous wealth that had come to him; its foul sources, its beginnings laid in filth, in deeds of blackness known to men and left unrebuked through fear, came upon him, as it were, for the first time. In this mood he sprang to his feet, hands shaking, eyes ablaze, in his soul such a rage as he had never been subject to. For an instant he stood wavering, gone blind and sick with the fury of his shame. Then, with a hoarse and guttural cry, he threw himself at the wall, snatched the great map from its fastenings, and tore, and tore, and trampled and tore again, till that long record of Russia's corruption lay scattered at his feet, a pile of crushed and crumpled bits of the vellum that had been chosen because of its indestructibility!