The Green Book Part 27

Krizsanowski had just ended his report of the St. Petersburg conference--to which a pale lady had lent most careful attention--when the duenna, keeping guard, entered hurriedly, and whispered, "Araktseieff has come." Then as quickly retreated.

"Oh, heavens!" sighed the pale lady, pressing her hands convulsively to her bosom.

"Now be strong as a man," whispered Krizsanowski. "The decisive moment is at hand!"

"Can it be that that brings him?" she asked, tremblingly.

"Not a doubt of it. Look well to your women, for he brings an arch spy with him. Handsome and dangerous with the s.e.x."

Just then the sound of carriage-wheels was audible in the courtyard below, amid much noise and the harsh tones of a man's voice.

"Make haste away! The Grand Duke is coming!" the pale lady whispered to Krizsanowski.

He, rising, took her hand in his.

Again the duenna appeared, this time rushing in, and saying, breathlessly:

"The Grand Duke is back from the manuvres. Just as they drove in at the gate one of the horses stumbled, the outrider was thrown, and the Grand Duke's pipe was so jolted that it broke one of his front teeth. He is wild with rage."

"Alas!" exclaimed the lady, and was hastening out. Krizsanowski held her back.

"You would do well just now to keep out of his way."

"On the contrary, it is just now that I must hurry to him," she answered, freeing herself from Krizsanowski's hold. "But you hasten away from here, that no one sees you."

"Well, then, be strong as a woman," he murmured, and disappeared.

Yet it was so difficult to disappear. Krizsanowski was in the palace of Belvedere, in the royal park of Lazienka, the residence of the Polish Viceroy, outside Warsaw. The park was surrounded by a great wall, guarded on all sides by armed soldiers. The castle itself a fortress, with high bastions and intrenchments, a deep moat round it, and drawbridge; every outlet was protected by an embrasure, there was no evading the sentries. Within cannon-range the n.o.ble forest-trees had been cleared away, and turf laid down adorned with tulip-beds. It is humanly impossible to go or come unperceived. And yet Krizsanowski did succeed in getting away, although Grand Duke Constantine had had the Belvedere built to his own plan, and had watched its construction with his own eyes. It was impossible that there should be any secret pa.s.sage unknown to him--and yet, supposing one did exist? The architect had been a Pole. He was capable of constructing a secret pa.s.sage by night, and so building it up again that the Grand Duke had no notion of its existence.

And so it really was. Constantine might have been surprised in his bed any night were not a.s.sa.s.sination detestable to a Pole.

His wife hurried out to meet him.

The tyrant met her in the armory hall. He was exactly as his contemporaries have described. Imagination had not run riot.

The Grand Duke had reason enough to be wroth with his brothers. They had all inherited their mother's beauty and n.o.ble presence. He alone possessed his father's repulsive features and person. Czar Paul was the impersonation of ugliness, so hideous in appearance that he would allow no coin bearing his effigy to be struck throughout the whole course of his reign. And Constantine was a faithful counterpart of his father. His enormous horn-shaped nose stood out from his face as if it had no connection with his forehead; his little sea-green eyes were scarce visible under his thick, s.h.a.ggy eyebrows and blinking, almost shut, eyelids. His hair, beard, eyebrows, and eyelashes were the color of hemp, his face red as Russia leather. But the most remarkable thing about him was that the one half of his face was unlike the other, as though Nature had intended to crown her master-work of ugliness by joining together two different caricatures. One corner of the mouth was turned up, the other down; the scars of small-pox, wrinkles, warts, so completed the disfigurement that the painter who would have perpetuated the face could only have attempted it in profile. In fact, the artist who would have painted him full-face would have been guilty of high-treason. So he is described by contemporary writers.

His exterior was the true picture of his inner man; his features were the slaves of his pa.s.sions. To look at him was to make one shudder or deride. As was his face, so was his disposition--violent, pa.s.sionate, cruel to a degree. He carried a stick always in his hand, and laid it about him freely. If it be true that his brother, the Czar, spent two thousand rubles a year in quill pens, it may be guessed what amount Constantine's yearly budget showed for smashed walking-sticks. The stick he now held in his hand was broken and split all the way up. No doubt he had been again laying it impartially about the shoulders of the several commandants of division. Their morning prayers were blows.

And there must needs come this accident. And through the confounded horse stumbling, and the postilions being thrown, the pipe, which was never out of the Grand Duke's mouth, had hurt his gum and broken him a tooth. He uttered the most horrible oaths, spitting out blood the while.

"Cursed hound! As soon as he comes to himself throw him into the water to rouse him! Bring him here. Miserable rascal! I'll break all his bones for him!" Just then he became aware of a gentleman advancing towards him. "Who is that? Chevalier Galban? No, you fools--that hound, I mean; not this gentleman! What does he want? Araktseieff has come? The devil take--Humph! It's the barber I want, and not a minister. Can't he see I've got a broken tooth? Why are you hanging about, Chevalier Galban?"

At that moment a lady, coming hurriedly up, pushed the Chevalier aside.

"For Heaven's sake, what has happened to you?" she cried, throwing herself on Constantine's breast. "My life, my dearest, are you wounded?

What is it?" And she kissed his bleeding lips.

Over the monster's face dawned a sudden smile--a smile joyous as the aurora borealis, sad as the depths it was, but it transformed the Grand Duke's hideous face. It chased away his violence. The wild, rugged features became more harmonious; the brutal mouth endeavored to a.s.sume a gentle expression.

"Nothing, nothing, my love!" he replied, in the voice of a lion caressing its mate. "Now, now, do not cry. Don't be frightened!"--his voice growing lower and lower. "There is nothing the matter."

"Oh, but your lips are bleeding. Your tooth is broken."

And she tried to stanch the blood with her handkerchief.

"It is not broken clean out," growled Constantine. "Only the crown of it. And the devil take the crown!"

"Why, your Highness," put in Galban, beginning to take part in the conversation, which had a.s.sumed so much milder a tone, "do you say, 'May the devil take the crown'?"

"At present it is only the crown of my tooth that is under discussion,"

returned the Viceroy, emphatically, in somewhat trembling tones. "Go you to Araktseieff, Chevalier Galban, and rest awhile after the fatigues of the journey. We shall have time for our talk after dinner. Before I have eaten and drunk I am in no mood to talk over state matters. Do not spoil my appet.i.te. _Zdravtvijtje!_ And as for you, bring that good-for-nothing here as soon as he has come to himself. I will try a couple of good boxes on the ear to see if his teeth are set like mine.

The scoundrel! If I had not been holding my pipe pretty firmly between my teeth the mouth-piece would have pierced through my jugular--"

"Oh, don't!" stammered his wife, in superst.i.tious dread, laying her trembling hands over the Grand Duke's mouth.

He, pressing a kiss upon the palm of her outstretched hand, threw his arm round her waist, and she, nestling up to him, they retired to their inner apartments, leaving Chevalier Galban standing in the hall.

"So you really would grieve if I were brought to you one day dead, run through the chest to my back?"

"Oh, do not say such things!" exclaimed she, making the sign of the cross over the spot to which Constantine pointed. And to smother such fearful words she shut his mouth with a long, fervent kiss.

"Child!" murmured the monster, and, taking his wife's head between his two hands, like a bear hugging the head of a lamb, he looked into her eyes. "Child! Does it not go against you to kiss my mouth? Do not the fumes of tobacco disgust you?"

With an innocent glance, she answered:

"I suppose every man's mouth emits the same smell of tobacco. I remember my father's did."

At these words the monster pressed her with such force to himself as though he would stifle her in his embrace.

"Oh, wondrous child! She knows neither the lies nor the flatteries of a court lady. She does not tell me that my breath is ambrosian. She only knows that it was so when her father kissed her, and therefore the lips of every man must be the same! Wife of mine, my father was as hideous as I am, and his wife loved him as dearly as you do me. And yet he was as repulsive as I."

"You cannot tell what you are like."

"Oh yes, I know. My mother used to tell me. She loved me best of all her children; spoiled me; allowed me my own way in everything. When my brothers and sisters used to complain about it, she would say, 'Let him alone. It is because he has his father's ugliness that I love him so.'

But I am a bad man too, and that my father never was. True, he was hot-headed, and a blow was as quick as a word with him; but I am savage by instinct. I am bad because I like it."

"That is not true. Who says so?"

"I say it myself. Often when I come home with an inch of cane in my hand, having broken it on the backs of all who have come in my way, I feel as if I could break the rest of it on my own head." Here, for the first time noticing that the broken cane still hung from his wrist by the strap, he flung it hastily from him.

"No, no, dear," said his wife, "it is that bad men exasperate you to wrath. You have to do with rough people who are stupid and cunning, and that irritates you. If they were good you would treat them kindly."

The monster stroked his wife's cheeks with caressing hand.

"And you really believe that I am good? Wonderful! I should have thought I had done enough to give proof to the contrary. I thought I was a very devil."

Meanwhile his wife had coaxed the monster to her dressing-room, and, sitting him down before the toilet-table, had been busily occupied by the aid of all manner of brushes and combs in bringing hair and beard into something like order. Then she bathed his hot, dusty face with lily water, and stuck court-plaster over the cut on his mouth.