CHAPTER XXIV
THE FIGURE IN THE GREY DOMINO
“I have tasted nothing all the day,” said Pauline, “I could not eat while you were fasting; but now, if you will give me your arm, Lord Courtenay, you shall conduct me to a chamber below, where there is a dinner set forth for us.”
Wilfrid, who received this news with a good deal of pleasure, for he happened to be terribly hungry, escorted Pauline to the room in question.
The two maids who were preparing to station themselves at the table, were dismissed by their impulsive mistress.
“Let me be your serving maid,” she whispered to Wilfrid.
There was about her an odd yet pretty air of penitence, an air that gave place at times to soft laughter when some jest fell from Wilfrid; then, as if conscious that gaiety did not become her so soon after her ill-treatment of him, she would become grave again; and so, what with her obvious desire to please him, and what with her winning glances, the last trace of resentment faded from Wilfrid’s mind.
He could not help thinking it strange that Pauline, who had evidently learned from her father all about the proposed duel, should betray no curiosity as to the lady that had caused it, but so it was; and, since she was silent on the matter, he himself maintained a similar reserve.
“Can you tell me,” he asked, “if the Czar attended the rendezvous?”
“Not if he believed in the lie of Lord St. Helens.”
“What was that?”
“A lie to which—what will you think of me?—I gave my sanction. At six this morning your uncle was to repair to the Czar with the news that Lord Courtenay, having discovered his opponent’s identity, had not only retired from the combat, but was travelling post haste to Narva, intending to take ship for his own country. In fact, it is your uncle’s plan that you be kept here under my care while he arranges to have you shipped and carried off to England. And in so doing he thinks he is consulting your best interests. _My_ part of the plan,” added Pauline, with a mock-mournful air, “has broken down. Now that you are free how do you intend to act?” she added, a little nervously.
“The Czar must learn that I have not played the coward. I shall go to St. Petersburg and somehow let him know that I am still in his capital, ready to meet him in duel, if he be so disposed.”
Pauline sighed over Wilfrid’s romantic obstinacy.
“The Czar will learn,” said she, with a rueful little smile, “that you were spirited away by Pauline de Vaucluse.”
“No, Baroness, no. I will suppress your name. You shall remain hidden under the title of a—a—ahem! a misguided patriot.”
“You are not going to set off for St. Petersburg to-night, I presume, seeing that it is now past ten o’clock?”
“No, I’ll defer my journey till the morning.”
Pauline sat in silence for a few moments, and then an odd light came into her eyes, and she smote her forehead with a pretty little gesture.
“_Ciel!_ how stupid of me!” she exclaimed. “Strange, is it not, that ideas the most obvious never seem to strike one at the time they should.”
“And what,” smiled Wilfrid, “is the obvious idea that you have overlooked?”
“That I need not have taken the trouble to imprison you when a sentence, one short sentence, would extinguish in you all desire for this duel.”
She spoke with a confidence such as half-disposed Wilfrid to believe her statement true. But though pressed as to her meaning, she refused just then to satisfy his curiosity.
“I will explain in the morning. You have had gloom enough for one day. Let me not act the part of a kill-joy to-night.”
The dinner being over, Pauline sent for Dr. Beauvais,—her steward, as well as physician—who, on entering, seemed surprised at beholding the two on friendly terms again.
“Now mind, sir,” said Pauline to Wilfrid, with an air of mock command, “no duelling with Dr. Beauvais, for I hear that you threatened him with one this morning.”
“Dr. Beauvais, as a loyal servant of the Baroness, is a man for whom I have the highest respect.”
“Then, in that case,” she smiled, “I can leave you safely with him. You will pardon my retiring, but I have not closed my eyes since the masquerade.”
Upon her withdrawal Beauvais proposed a cigar, and the pair sallied forth from a portcullised archway.
“I did not expect to see a feudal-looking castle in this part of Europe,” remarked Wilfrid.
“An architectural whim of the first Catharine,” returned Beauvais. “Built in imitation of one in Livonia, that she had often admired when a peasant girl.”
Before them in that faint, lovely twilight, which is the only night St. Petersburg has in the month of July, lay a smooth, verdant lawn, fringed by a dark pine-wood, whose vistas terminated in a distant shimmer of blue water.
“If you are hesitating which way to go,” observed Wilfrid, “let us turn to the Silver Strand.”
“Ah! Good! The view from that point is particularly fine.”
It was not the view that Wilfrid was thinking of, but the remark overheard at the masquerade that the lady’s fan that had dropped into the river would be carried by the current to this strand; and an unaccountable impulse came upon him to verify the statement.
Smoking and conversing, the two men strolled leisurely onward through a woodland path that finally opened upon a beach of glistening grey sand.
The view from it, as the doctor had said, was very fine, so fine that Wilfrid forgot all about the fan.
Pauline’s island of Runö was situated near the entrance of one of the deltoid arms of the Neva. Standing upon the Silver Strand and looking eastwards Wilfrid had before him a long perspective of broad water, its shores on each side dark with woods of birch and pine. Amid this night of groves gleamed many a white villa, whose twinkling lights were mirrored in the water. The beauty of the night had drawn the dwellers forth; gondolas glided to and fro; the laughter of men and women, mingling with the sweet strains of the guitar, came, mellowed by the distance, over the smooth, blue water.
“A midsummer night’s dream,” murmured Wilfrid.
Turning to his companion he found that _his_ eyes were set, not upon the river-view, but upon a part of the Silver Strand itself, and following the direction of the doctor’s gaze, Wilfrid saw, some distance away, and a few feet from the water’s edge, a recumbent figure bearing resemblance to that of a woman.
She was lying at full length upon her left side, her face being turned from them, lying in a somewhat singular attitude, Wilfrid thought; for both arms were extended behind her back in such fashion as almost to suggest that they were tied at the wrists; distance and the twilight prevented him from seeing clearly whether such were the case.
“One of the Baroness’s girls asleep?” said Beauvais, taking the cigar from his teeth. “_Parbleu!_ she chooses an odd hour and an odd place for sleeping.”
Thinking to rouse her, he gave utterance to a shout, loud enough, one would have thought, to awaken the soundest sleeper.
The woman did not stir.
The doctor looked at Wilfrid; Wilfrid looked at the doctor. There was something weird in the sight of this lonely figure as it lay there, silent and motionless, in the ghostly starlight, with the river plashing faintly at its feet, above its head the night-wind sighing through the pines.
Strange that both men hesitated to take the few paces necessary to solve their doubts!
The doctor perhaps would have been puzzled to give _his_ reason. Far different was it with Wilfrid; he hung back from facing the truth. All the fear he had ever known, gathered up and sublimated into one tense, overwhelming sensation, would have failed to equal the dread that fell upon him at this moment as he discerned that the figure had fair, sunny hair and a costume whose silvery grey colour was scarcely distinguishable from the sand it touched!
What if it should be——?
Suddenly the doctor, throwing away his cigar, set off at a brisk run in the direction of the figure, an action that caused Wilfrid to run likewise.
He was the first to reach the silent woman, and saw that her ankles and wrists were bound with cords. The face was hidden by a mask of grey silk that had lost its crispness, apparently by saturation in water, for it adhered to her features like a second skin. It had slipped downwards a little, so that the eyes and mouth were hidden.
Wilfrid stooped and lifted the mask.
And it was the Princess, cold and dead!