“If my wife and I had been one minute later,” was the reply, “all would have been lost. I had only just broken the secret spring, when I heard loud commands to surrender, while the door was being violently assailed.”
“Ugh!” shuddered one or two. “It’s as well we’re out of it. But what had we better do next?”
“I do not think that it would be advisable for any more of you to leave the theater now,” said the manager. “The police will be watching the whole neighborhood very carefully just now. You very likely all need refreshment badly, or will before you have a chance of obtaining any elsewhere. Four of you shall have some wine and such substantial fare as I have already provided, while the rest walk boldly on to the stage. You must refresh yourselves in relays of four. I don’t want too many people in this room at once, as we are likely to be interrupted at any moment, and my advice is that you spend as short a time here as is consistent with a substantial meal, which I again warn you will be needed. I will give you all part of some play to masquerade on the stage with, and if any prying spies intrude, you will be supposed to be rehearsing for to-night’s performance. As evening approaches, the theater will be lighted up, and before the real artists arrive you must so dispose yourselves as to be able to join the audience unobtrusively. You will then be comparatively safe, as no one will imagine that people who know the police to be on their track would spend the evening listening to a comic opera, thus apparently wasting valuable time. After the play is over, you can emerge with the crowd, and go your several directions in comparative safety. After that it will be each one for himself, and the God of nations for us all. And now, my friends, I have my daily duties to perform, and must attend to them at once, if I would avoid the curse of suspicion. So good-by, and may our unhappy country be no more under the necessity of fighting against those whose duty it is to help instead of to oppress!”
This wish was fervently echoed by the rest of those present. There was a solemn ceremony of handshaking, and then the Society which had exacted such a horrible duty from my husband was disbanded forever, although many of its members found it advisable to follow the manager’s advice and abide in the theater until after the evening performance. Sergius and I were of the number; and, greatly to our relief, the tickets and passports with which Sergius was already provided were accepted at the railway stations without suspicion.
Our journey to the frontier, although desperately fatiguing, proved uneventful, and when, having traveled by the Brest-Litovsk route, we found ourselves in Berlin, we felt able to express to each other without fear our thankfulness at our escape. In Berlin we stayed for a couple of days, to take much needed rest, and to replenish our shabby and scanty wardrobe, since we did not care to return to England with nothing but the clothes we stood up in.
There was no need for Sergius to sell any of our jewelry to provide ready money. He was well supplied with cash, and had this not been so he could have drawn upon a Berlin banker whom he knew.
A couple of days later we presented ourselves, somewhat travel-worn, but otherwise in good health, at the house of Prince Michaelow, in Kensington, and I shall never forget the delighted astonishment with which he and Nina welcomed us “home” again.
“Thank God!” said the former. “We never expected to see either of you alive again.”
“You see, I fetched him home,” I said to Nina, and I hardly know whether smiles or tears most prevailed as I received my friend’s enraptured caresses.
“I can’t think how you have managed so beautifully,” said Nina; “unless, indeed, you only went part of the way.”