“Dear child, no. But it is a person of whom you have often heard—Yegor Popoff, my poor Katinka’s husband.”
“Oh, Marraine! How did he get here?”
“When he left Katinka, he went to Pavelsburg to look for work, and made a voyage to Sweden as ship’s carpenter. At Bergen he heard that my friend Feodor Petrovitch, to whom this yacht belongs, was in the harbour looking out for a carpenter, as the one he had brought from England had died, and he obtained the post. And now, without our knowing it, he was waiting at Cadiz, and we, without his knowing it, were bringing Katinka to him. Do you see now why we were driven out of Scythia, my child?”
“I see,” said Nadia. “But what are you going to do? Have you said anything?”
“Said anything?” cried the Princess. “My dear child, I have said everything! I sent for Yegor to come to me in the saloon, and I have spoken to him very seriously. I told him how wrong and foolish he had been in doubting Katinka and in listening to Anna at all, and much more so in running away as he did. He saw it all for himself—in fact, nothing but pride had kept him from coming back and telling her so. He was waiting for her to write first, when she did not know where he was! I think I made him thoroughly ashamed of himself. When I saw that he was really sorry, I slipped out and fetched Katinka. She was ready enough to forgive, poor child! and I left them together. What a happy beginning for our voyage, is it not?”
Nadia acquiesced, and a new hope rose suddenly in her own heart. Could this voyage be destined to bring Caerleon and herself together, as it had already united Yegor and Katinka? The same thought had occurred to the maid, who came shyly to tell her that she and Yegor were praying that she might be as happy as they were. They did not know her story; but Katinka guessed at it, and found it easy to fill up the details from imagination. Her sympathy contributed still further to raise Nadia’s spirits, and perhaps to bring her into the somewhat uncharitable frame of mind in which she welcomed the discomfiture of Captain Binks. In any case, she submitted cheerfully to the necessary detention at Valetta, in spite of the desolate aspect of the dried-up town, with its huge fortifications and flat-roofed white houses, and was indefatigable in helping the Princess to render habitable the enormous rooms, stone-floored and scantily furnished, in which they took up their abode while the repairs to the yacht were pending.
Here it was that two days later they heard the news of the rebellion in Thracia—news which sent all the special correspondents who keep portmanteaus ready packed, in case of a sudden summons, to the Balkans at racing speed. Carlino was dethroned, Peter was restored, Bellaviste was in the hands of the Franzist party,—this was what the telegram, despatched by M. Sertchaieff and his brother the General, told the world, and after its contents had been made public there was silence for several days. What those days of waiting were to Nadia it is impossible to describe. As is always the case when no authoritative news can be obtained, the most sensational rumours were rife—all, of course, founded on “private messages of undoubted trustworthiness,” or on the utterances of “a person who was better acquainted with the east of Europe than any other man living.” The purveyors of news of this description were largely concerned with the fate of Caerleon, and his supposed adventures formed the universal subject of conversation in Valetta society. There was not an Englishman in the island that did not admire the way in which he had stuck to his kingdom, although there were some who objected to his having gone to Thracia at all, and many were the conjectures, each backed by the authority of some newspaper statement or other, as to what had become of him. He had yielded to the demands of the rebels without striking a blow; he had refused to abdicate until a pistol was held to his head; he had offered such a strenuous resistance that he had been vanquished only when severely wounded; he was now imprisoned in one of the underground galleries of the Bellaviste fortifications; he had entered the service of King Peter; he had disappeared mysteriously; he had blown out his brains; he had been murdered;—the variety and mutual inconsistency of the rumours bore reliable testimony to one point only, the impenetrable mystery that shrouded his fate. It seemed certain that he was not at large, or why was he making no effort to regain his throne? but it seemed certain also that the victory of the insurgents had not been so complete as was at first reported, or why did they not send for King Peter?
That easy-going gentleman was still at Nice, apparently caring very little whether he was restored to his kingdom or not, and professing to have no more certain knowledge than any one else whether Thracia was in a state of civil war or had submitted calmly to the new order of things. Meanwhile the Thracian border was beset by hordes of eager journalists, each man anxious to obtain for his own paper the first authentic news, and all alike refused an entrance into the kingdom. One or two, more enterprising than their fellows, succeeded in crossing the frontier at some unguarded point; but they were detected and seized before they had got a mile nearer the capital, and after a few hours’ detention in a police-station to cool their ardour, were escorted over the border again without gaining any information beyond a further addition to the stock of rumours.
At last a definite piece of news made its way to the frontier, and remained uncontradicted. M. Drakovics, still strong in the possession of office, was at Tatarjé, and was engaged in conference with the envoy from Roum, while negotiations were being carried on with the various Powers. The next day the embargo on special correspondents was removed, and the long-tried newspaper men rushed across the frontier, and raced one another to Bellaviste. The ‘Empire City Crier’ only missed gaining the earliest details through an unfortunate accident which befell the cart in which its representative was being conveyed at break-neck speed across country; but as it was, the correspondent of the ‘Fleet Street’ took the first place, with the unconquerable Mr Hicks as a good second. After them came the representatives of numberless other journals, and Europe was speedily deluged with full, true, and particular accounts of the origin, progress, and extinction of the revolt.
The news reached Malta in time for publication in the morning papers. Ever since the first tidings of the outbreak had arrived, the Princess and Nadia had heard nothing discussed, whether in public or in private, but the “Thracian business,” with all the gruesome details which the hopes or fears or imaginations of different people had grafted on to the truth. The long uncertainty had made the girl sick with fear. She was almost driven to feel that it would have been less painful to hear once for all that Caerleon was dead than to have absolutely no idea as to what had become of him. On this particular morning she was crouching in one of the windows of the great bare drawing-room, afraid to go out lest she should hear the question of Caerleon’s fate discussed once again, but knowing that she could not refrain from listening to the conjectures which tormented her, when the Princess was summoned to an interview with Captain Binks. Breakfast was only just over; but the autocrat of the Anna Karénina resembled time and tide in that he waited for no man, and he wanted the Princess’s authority for some item of the repairs to the yacht. The formality, which was naturally of a purely ceremonial character, having been gone through, Captain Binks was about to depart, when the Princess caught sight of a newspaper sticking out of his pocket.