"My daughter will be educated in Germany at your cost," he said curtly. "I would speak first of one who is as a son to me because of her affection for him. There is a young Englishman living in Union Street, the son of a poor clergyman who died in the service of the poor. This lad you will take into your own house and treat as your own son. It is my desire and must be gratified. Remember that he is the son of a gentleman and treat him as such. There will be time enough afterwards to tell you how you must act in the interests of our people at Warsaw. This affair is our own and not of politics at all. As God is in heaven, but for my daughter you, Maxim Gogol, would not be alive this night."
Gessner's heart sank again at the hint of further requests subsequently to come. The suggestion that he should adopt into his own house a youth of whom he knew nothing seemed in keeping with the circumstances of this dread encounter and the penalty that must be paid for it. After all, it was but a small price to pay for comparative security and the silence of a tongue which could work such ill. Accustomed to deal with men of all natures, honest and simple, clever and foolish, secretive and loquacious, there ran in his mind the desperate idea that he would temporize with Paul Boriskoff and ultimately destroy him. Let the Russian Government be informed of the activity of this Pole and of his intention to visit the Continent of Europe again, and what were Boriskoff's chances? Such were the treacherous thoughts which stood in Gessner's mind while he framed an answer which should avert the final hour of reckoning and give him that opportunity for the counter-stroke which might yet save all.
"Your youth will profit little in my house," he said with some pretense of earnestness. "Had you asked an education abroad for him, that would have been a wiser thing in these days. Frankly, I do not understand your motive, but I am none the less willing to humor it. Let me know something more of the lad, let me have his history and then I shall be able to say what is the best course. I live a very quiet life and my daughter is much away. There is the possibility also that the boy, if he be the son of a clergyman, would do much better at Oxford or at Cambridge than at Hampstead, as you yourself must see. Let us speak of it afterwards. There will be time enough."
"The time is to-day," rejoined Boriskoff, firmly, "Alban Kennedy will live under your roof as your own son. I have considered the matter and am determined upon it. When the time comes for him to marry my daughter, I will inform you of it. Understand, he knows nothing of your story or of mine. He will not hear of me in my absence from England. I leave the burden of this to you. He is a proud lad and will accept no charity. It must be your task to convince him that he has a title to your benevolence. Be wise and act discreetly. Our future requisitions will depend upon your conduct of this affair—and God help you, Maxim Gogol, if you fail in it."
Something of the fanatic, almost of the madman, spoke in this vehement utterance. If Gessner had been utterly at a loss as yet to account for a request so unusual, he now began to perceive in it the instrument of his own humiliation. Would not this stranger be a perpetual witness to the hazard of his life, a son who stood also as a hostage, the living voice of Paul Boriskoff's authority? And what of his own daughter Anna and of the story he must tell her? These facts he realized clearly but had no answer to them. The reluctant assent, wrung from his unwilling lips, was the promise of a man who stood upon the brink of ruin and must answer as his accusers wished or pay the ultimate penalty. All his common masterfulness, the habit of autocracy, the anger of the bully and the tyrant, trembled before the clear cold eyes of this man he had wronged. He must answer or pay the price, humiliate himself or suffer.
* * * * *
And to-night Alban Kennedy slept beneath his roof; the bargain had been clinched, the word spoken. Twenty thousand pounds had he paid to Paul Boriskoff that morning for the education of his daughter and in part satisfaction of the ancient claim. But the witness of his degradation had come to him and must remain.
Aye, and there the strife of it began. When he put detectives upon the lad's path, had him followed from Union Street to the caves and from the caves to his place of employment, the report came to him that he was interesting himself in a callous ne'er-do-well, the friend of rogues and vagabonds, the companion of sluts, the despair of the firm which employed him. He had expected something of the kind, but the seeming truth dismayed him. In a second interview with Boriskoff he used all his best powers of argument and entreaty to effect a compromise. He would send the lad to the University, have him educated abroad, establish him in chambers—do anything, in fact, but that which the inexorable Pole demanded of him. This he protested with a humility quite foreign to him and an earnestness which revealed the depth of the indignity he suffered; but Boriskoff remained inflexible.
"I am determined upon it," was the harsh retort; "the boy shall be as a link between us. Keep him from this hell in which he has lived and I will set so much to your credit. I warn you that you have a difficult task. Do not fail in it as you value your own safety."
The manner of this reply left Gessner no alternative, and he sent Silas Geary to Whitechapel as we have seen. A less clever man, perhaps, would have fenced alike with the proposal and the threat; but he knew his own countrymen too well for that. Perhaps a hope remained that any kindness shown to this vagrant lad would win back ultimately his ancient freedom. Alone in his room this night, a single light rebutting the darkness, he understood into what an abyss of discovery he had fallen, the price that must be paid, the debt that he owed to forgotten years.