Princess Zara Part 15

"Zara, my love!"

She wheeled upon me and clasped her hands together behind my neck, looking up at me with trouble-shrouded eyes, and with brows that were slightly corrugated by the perplexities of the moment.

"Listen to me, sweetheart," she said, with her face so close to mine that I had all I could do to refrain from interrupting her. "We must not belittle the perils that lie yonder. There are two lives in danger now, for if anything should happen to you, it would kill me also. I am selfish now, Dubravnik, in my concern for you, for after all it is myself whom I would protect, through you. But we must not belittle the danger. I know that you are brave and daring; that you have no fear. I realize that you view with contempt the perils that beset you, but oh, my love, suppose that you should not escape."

"Why suppose it, Zara? I am here; the danger is there. We need not antic.i.p.ate it. Let us leave it to be met at the proper moment, forgetting for this once, that it exists."

"No, no, we must control ourselves. We have been children for an hour or more, forgetful of all things save love; but now let us be what we are, a man and a woman who have perils to face."

"And who, I trust, have the courage to meet them, Zara."

"Ay, courage; but courage alone does not always accomplish the sought for end. Courage alone is not inevitably competent to meet and overcome conditions. And we need more than courage, Dubravnik; we need resource."

"Resource is something with which we are both moderately well provided," I suggested, smiling, and still refusing to accept her words as seriously as she intended them.

She stamped her foot impatiently upon the rug, and frowned a little, with a touch of petulance in her manner that was the most bewitching thing I had yet seen about her.

"Do be your own self for a moment," she commanded me, withdrawing from my restraining arm and stepping away out of my reach.

"How can I be myself, when I see and realize only you?" I bantered her.

Then came another transition almost as startling as it was complete.

She threw herself bodily forward into my embrace, clasping her clinging arms about me, while she buried her beautiful face between my chin and shoulder and burst into a pa.s.sion of sobs which convulsed her so utterly that I was alarmed.

I had tried her too far with my bantering att.i.tude, and my apparent indifference to a threatening and terrible fate.

"Zara!" I said. "My love!"

But she only sobbed on and on, and I held her crushed against me until the storm should pa.s.s, knowing that a great calm would succeed it, and that her present expression of emotion was only the safety valve for all that had pa.s.sed between us since the incident when our lips met for the first time.

CHAPTER XIII

LOVE WILL FIND A WAY

We crossed to the window together, and stood looking through it upon the snow clad streets of the city. The storm of the preceding day and night had entirely cleared away, leaving only the inevitable traces of its violence.

As we stood there, Zara pulled the lace curtains between us and the window, so that we were screened from view, while we were enabled, ourselves, to see with perfect distinctness, up and down the thoroughfare against which her home was fronted.

It might have been a Sunday morning, so peaceful and quiet was the scene, and so purely white was everything, in its covering of snow, while the crisp atmosphere of that cold but brilliant Winter day, sparkled and glinted in the sunshine as if thousands of microscopic diamonds were glistening there.

A solitary policeman pa.s.sed into our view and out of it again, a _britzska_ rushed past an adjacent corner with the horse at galloping speed; a child played with its father for a moment, within our range of vision, and then disappeared; a fur clad pedestrian ran up the steps of a nearby residence, and pa.s.sed inside of it; all these trivial incidents of observation, came and went, while we stood there, leaving behind them no impression save one of peace, quiet and security. Yet they impressed themselves upon my memory indelibly, and I can see before me even now, the vision of that afternoon in St. Petersburg, with the clinging right hand of my beloved one resting upon my shoulder, with my left arm about her warm and pulsing body, with love, in all its transcendent qualities, dominating all things real and unreal, and filling my heart, and soul, and my intelligence, with a perfection of blissful content which words cannot describe, and which may never be understood save by him who has experienced it.

What terror had Zara seen through that window, that had startled her so, just before we discovered and confessed our mutual love? Whatever it may have been, no evidence of it remained, to suggest disquiet in my own present sense of security. There was nothing there to menace me, and even though Zara's brother Ivan, and others of his kind, fanatics all, in their nihilistic tendencies, wild beasts in their blood l.u.s.ts, fiends in their methods, as they were--whatever they might threaten, seemed small indeed to me, in that moment of ecstasy. For it was a moment of ecstasy; the word "moment" being measured by the rule of s.p.a.ce, limitless and unconfined.

Zara did not know who and what I was, save only that I was a man, and her lover. Beyond that, her imagination had not travelled, and her desires had not sought.

She did not understand that I was at the head of a great fraternity, organized and established by myself, and that I had under my control, if not obedient to my direct command, several hundred individuals within the limit of that city, who would serve me instantly, and who would fight to the death for me if there were need.

It was to be regretted that I had gone to the home of the Princess Zara to keep my appointment that day, with so little thought of the dangers I might have to encounter before I should leave it again. It would have been so easy to arrange for adequate protection, and to have had at that very moment, when I was gazing through the lace curtained window, a.s.sistance ready at hand in the shape of men prepared to answer to any signal I might have agreed upon. A word dropped to O'Malley at his cafe, a sign made to big Tom Coyle, a note in cipher to Canfield, an indication to anyone of my trusted lieutenants, would have placed about me at that very moment, an environment of protection adequate to cope with any difficulty that might arise.

But I had not foreseen the present circ.u.mstance sufficiently to be prepared for it in that manner.

Zara and I were practically alone in that great house, save for the servants it contained; and they were not to be counted upon in any case, no matter what form individual effort against us might take.

I was conscious, too, while we stood there so silently together, of the new responsibility I had taken upon myself during the love scene that had just pa.s.sed; and I was suddenly aware of the danger which threatened my beloved, through me.

I did not realize it until that instant. I had thought, selfishly enough, only of what she had said about my own peril. I had remembered only that I was the object of a planned a.s.sa.s.sination, because some one whom I had not discovered at the time, had overheard the interview in the garden to which I had been a witness the preceding night, and had also listened to the one that followed it, between Zara and me.

The thrill of alarm that convulsed me, when the full realization of this aspect of the affair came home to me, was startling and paralyzing. Whatever the friends of nihilism might do to me now, would have its crushing effect upon her, also. Nothing could touch me, that would not injure her. We had become one, indeed, in the sense of being so absorbed in each other, so blended in soul and in thought, that whatever affected one, must act with redoubled power upon the other.

Judged from the standpoint of the nihilists themselves, there was no doubt that they were logical enough in their determination to kill _me_. From their view of the case, I was merely a spy, or at least a prospective one, who had overheard a confidence delivered by the Princess Zara de Echeveria, which placed her so absolutely in my power that I held her life, as the saying goes, in the hollow of my hand; and they could not know, would never guess, that now we had learned to love each other, and that she was dearer and sweeter to me than all else in the world.

They would regard me--they must now regard me, as being like other men of their knowledge, who would see in Zara only a beautiful and attractive woman, young and gorgeous, who was suddenly fallen into my power, almost as absolutely as if she were made my slave. What personal sacrifices could I not demand of her, if I were indeed like those other men I have mentioned? What indignities could I not visit upon her, claiming my right to do so as the possessor of her secret, and threatening, not alone her own undoing, but the death of her cause, if she should dare to deny me?

Somewhere out there in the snow, Zara's brother Ivan was waiting and watching, and although I did not now feel that his affection for her included many of the self sacrificing qualities that a brother should have for a sister, he was nevertheless her blood kin, and without doubt he had loaded his pistol with a bullet for the man whom he believed would have it in his power to crush that beautiful sister to the earth, even to the point of literal seduction. For judged from the nihilists'

standpoint again, they understood Zara to be one who would not hesitate at any sacrifice, in defense of the cause she served.

"It does not look as if danger, and even death, lurked somewhere yonder in the bright sunshine, Dubravnik," she said to me in a low tone, after we had stood for a long time in utter silence, together.

"No," I replied.

"It is a peaceful scene," she went on in a dreamy sort of manner, staring into the street, and with a half smile upon her lips. "It looks as if we might put on our furs and wraps, and go abroad together, without the least thought of danger, does it not?"

"Yes, Zara."

"And yet----" she raised one hand and pointed--"probably just around that corner, yonder, or behind one of the others, there are waiting men, who are intent upon your destruction, no matter what the consequences to themselves may be. It is awful to contemplate." She shuddered. "I cannot bring myself to believe that it is really true; and yet I know it to be so."

She turned to me with a swift gesture, and continued.

"Oh, Dubravnik, what shall we do? What shall be done to escape the death that threatens you and me? Tell me! Tell me what can be done? The condition is not the same, now, as it was. Everything is different since you kissed me. This world in which we live, is a new world, but we must nevertheless face the conditions of that old one we have deserted. What shall we do? What shall be done?"

I was silent, not because I hesitated to answer her, not because I really at that moment had no answer to give her, but because I was, myself, intently thinking upon the very problem she had suggested.

"What shall be done?"

Presently, with a slow and methodical motion, she withdrew from me again, and returned to the divan, which had been the scene of our awakening love, calling upon me to follow her as she went; and I stood before her, looking down into her eyes up-turned to mine, waiting for her to speak. I knew that she had hit upon some solution of the difficulty, and was about to present it to me. I don't think that it occurred to me to consider seriously whatever she might suggest, even then, for I had not for a moment lost confidence in my entire ability to free both of us from the dangerous environment; but I delighted to hear the sound of her voice. I loved to drink in her words, as she uttered them. I was enthralled in watching the play of expression upon her features while she talked; if she had rendered me a dissertation upon any theme which absorbed her, my interest would have been the same; I was overwhelmed in love.

"There is only one way; only one," she said, unconsciously repeating words she had used once before.

"Yes?" I replied, mindful only of the fact that she had spoken; unmindful of the import of what she said.

"Only one way," Zara repeated. "You must join the nihilists. You must take the oath."